The reason is that power-drunk Washington Democrats -- now that they control the White House and both houses of Congress -- have been too busy falling all over themselves in a treasonous rush to impose even MORE Nazi-style laws and policies on the people whom they laughingly profess to "serve."

Let's go down the list, shall we?

S.510 / HR 2751 - a bill designed both to virtually criminalize organic/non-GMO foods and to "regulate" family farms out of existence -- all under the laughably false pretense of "food safety":

Does everyone now see how utterly spot on Harry Browne was when (during a speech he gave at the 1998 National Libertarian Party Convention) he said the following?

"The Republicans and Democrats lie awake nights trying to think up new proposals to expand big government. They are continually flooding us with all kinds of threats and proposals and programs that they're going to pass, and we can feel that we must jump up and fight against these things....But as long as we do that, we will be doing it for the rest of our lives -- fighting brush fires wherever we go; whatever they want to do we have to fight back and they will be calling the shots. WE must be making the proposals for change."

If there's one thing I'm absolutely convinced of, it is this: we have zero chance of ever reclaiming our rightful control over our own government -- and hence our very lives -- as long as we stay in perpetual reaction mode, because as long as we do that, we'll always be on the defensive; and as long as we're on the defensive, the banker-owned political establishment will keep right on manipulating the terms of our ongoing struggle against it to its continual advantage.

That's why I so often make the point that We the People must agree to disagree on the diversionary wedge issues (e.g., gay marriage) that partisan hacks in the corporate whore "news" media soooo love to obsess over, and -- following the example set in September 2008 by three of the 3rd party presidential candidates when they united behind four points of agreement -- join forces in a non-partisan, cross-ideological coalition to exert AGGRESSIVE, NON-STOP, ROUND-THE-CLOCK PRESSURE on Congress (and, when applicable, our state legislators) to implement public policy reforms on which the vast majority of us agree.

Now, if I had my way, we'd all unite behind the following reform measures:

* Put all derivatives-infected mega-banks through Chapter 11 bankruptcy and, in the reorganization proceedings, legally void all of their derivatives contracts.

* Liquidate all of the ill-gotten assets of criminal scam artists such as Henry Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, and use the resultant proceeds to help replenish whatever retirement funds they raided.

* Replace our current debt-based money system with a debt-free "Greenback" money system, whereby all new money -- instead of being loaned into circulation at interest -- is spent into circulation at no interest. (More on this here.)

* Institute a new round of international agreements modeled on the Bretton Woods Accords, with an aim towards replacing the current “floating” exchange rates for national currencies with a fixed rate that, as such, is pegged to the value of either an agreed-upon standardized price index or an agreed-upon “basket” of diverse, widely available, everyday commodities. (More on this here.)

But if there were only two things most of us could agree on, I would hope it would be election reform and monetary reform.

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"Would the essence of slavery change if the rules at a slave auction permitted a slave to choose between the two highest bidders for himself? Could the fact that he made such a choice be interpreted as his sanction for his chains? How can it be argued that the citizen is free in a democracy when he has the choice of two candidates if neither candidate is willing to recognize his right to freedom?"

"Voting symbolizes the equality of people, premised on the fact that no person has an inherent right to exercise coercive power over other people. But voting is not enough. The more that voting is glorified as a panacea, the more lackadaisical people are about knowing or defending their rights as citizens. The point is not to abolish elections, but to recognize that elections are a dubious means to safeguard people's rights, liberties, and vital interests."

"In politics a person is not a citizen if the person's only function is to vote. Voters choose people who, in turn, act like citizens. They argue. They establish the forms within which people live their lives. They make politics. The people who merely vote for them merely make politicians. People who argue for their positions in a town meeting are acting like citizens. People who simply drop scraps of paper in a box or pull a lever are not acting like citizens; they are acting like consumers picking between prepackaged items. They had nothing to do with the items. All they can do is pick what is. They cannot actively participate in making what should be."

"Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow. Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness." [Emphasis original]

Since the Nazi-style "eugenics" agenda of the NWO is rooted in the Malthusian philosophy, I thought I'd repost here what I've posted elsewhere concerning the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of that philosophy.

Yet that is exactly what Malthusian propagandists were waxing alarmist about over two centuries ago. It was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now.

"Here is a difference between the animal and the man. Both the jayhawk and the man eat chickens, but the more jayhawks the fewer chickens, while the more men the more chickens. Both the seal and the man eat salmon, but when a seal takes a salmon there is a salmon the less, and were seals to increase past a certain point salmon must diminish; while by placing the spawn of the salmon under favorable conditions man can so increase the number of salmon as more than to make up for all he may take, and thus, no matter how much men may increase, their increase need never outrun the supply of salmon.

"In short, while all through the vegetable and animal kingdoms the limit of subsistence is independent of the thing subsisted, with man the limit of subsistence is, within the final limits of earth, air, water, and sunshine, dependent upon man himself."

Even worse, however, is the fact that modern-day Malthusians tend to be either members or lapdog servants of the very parasitic ruling class that -- by engineering acute poverty in Third World nations -- actually caused the population explosions they incessantly whine about.

The Demographic transition model (DTM) is a model used to represent the process of explaining the transformation of countries from high birth rates and high death rates to low birth rates and low death rates as part of the economic development of a country from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economy. It is based on an interpretation begun in 1929 by the American demographer Warren Thompson of prior observed changes, or transitions, in birth and death rates in industrialized societies over the past two hundred years.

Most developed countries are beyond stage three of the model; the majority of developing countries are in stage 2 or stage 3. The model was based on the changes seen in Europe so these countries follow the DTM relatively well. Many developing countries have moved into stage 3. The major (relative) exceptions are some poor countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and some Middle Eastern countries, which are poor or affected by government policy or civil strife, notably Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Yemen and Afghanistan.

Summary of the theory

The transition involves four stages, or possibly five.

* In stage one, pre-industrial society, death rates and birth rates are high and roughly in balance.

* In stage two, that of a developing country, the death rates drop rapidly due to improvements in food supply and sanitation, which increase life spans and reduce disease. These changes usually come about due to improvements in farming techniques, access to technology, basic healthcare, and education. Without a corresponding fall in birth rates this produces an imbalance, and the countries in this stage experience a large increase in population.

* In stage three, birth rates fall due to access to contraception, increases in wages, urbanization, a reduction in subsistence agriculture, an increase in the status and education of women, a reduction in the value of children's work, an increase in parental investment in the education of children and other social changes. Population growth begins to level off.

* During stage four there are both low birth rates and low death rates. Birth rates may drop to well below replacement level as has happened in countries like Germany, Italy, and Japan, leading to a shrinking population, a threat to many industries that rely on population growth. As the large group born during stage two ages, it creates an economic burden on the shrinking working population. Death rates may remain consistently low or increase slightly due to increases in lifestyle diseases due to low exercise levels and high obesity and an aging population in developed countries.

Let's try to understand why, by looking at our own demographic history. As recently as two or three generations ago, mortality rates in the United States were as high as they are now in most third world countries. Opportunities for our grandmothers to work outside the home were limited. And ours was largely an agrarian society in which every family member was needed to work on the farm. Coauthor Frances Lappé's own grandmother, for example, gave birth to nine children, raised them alone on a small farm, and saw only six survive to adulthood. Her story would not be unusual in a still fast-growing third world country today.

Faced with scarcity, poor families needed many children to help with work on the farm, and because of high infant-mortality rates, they needed many more pregnancies and births to achieve the necessary family size.

In the United States, the move to two-children families took place only after a society-wide transition that lowered infant death rates, opened opportunities to women outside the home, and transformed ours into an industrial rather than agrarian economy, so that families no longer relied on their children's labor. If we contrast Lappé's grandmother's story to a latter-day urban middle-class family, we can see that children who were once a source of needed labor are now a source of major costs, including tuition, an extra room in the house, the latest model basketball shoes, and forgone earnings for every year that a professional mom stays home with the kids.

The United States advanced through the falling-birth-rate phase of the demographic transition in response to these societal changes, well before the advent of sophisticated contraceptive technologies, even while the government remained actively hostile to birth control. (As late as 1965, selling contraceptives was still illegal in some states.)

Using our own country's experience to understand rapid population growth in the third world, where poverty is more extreme and widespread, we can now extend our hypothesis concerning the link between hunger and high fertility rates: both persist where societies deny security and opportunity to the majority of their citizens-where infant-mortality rates are high and adequate land, jobs, education, health care, and old-age security are beyond the reach of most people, and where there are few opportunities for women to work outside the home.

Without resources to secure their future, people can rely only on their own families. Thus, when poor parents have lots of children, they are making a rational calculus for survival. High birth rates reflect people's defensive reaction against enforced poverty. For those living at the margin of survival, children provide labor to augment meager family income. In Bangladesh, one study showed that even by the age of six a boy provides labor and/or income for the family. By the age of twelve, at the latest, he contributes more than he consumes.

Population investigators tell us that the benefit children provide to their parents in most third world countries cannot be measured just by hours of labor or extra income. The intangibles are just as important. Bigger families carry more weight in community affairs. With no reliable channels for advancement in sight, parents may hope that the next child will be the one clever or lucky enough to get an education and land a city job despite the odds. In many countries, income from one such job in the city can support a whole family in the countryside.

And impoverished parents know that without children to care for them in old age, they will have nothing. They also realize that none of these possible benefits will be theirs unless they have many children, since hunger and lack of health care will kill many of their offspring before they reach adulthood.

So, if "overpopulation" is not the real cause of world poverty and environmental degradation, then what is?

One of the primary causes is the horribly corrupt and parasitic process whereby international bankers extract countless billions in usurious interest from developing economies each year in exchange for the nothing out of which they create the so-called "money" they loan:

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“The Third World War has already started -- a silent war, not for that reason any less sinister. This war is tearing down Brazil, Latin America and practically all the Third World. Instead of soldiers dying there are children, instead of millions of wounded there are millions of unemployed; instead of destruction of bridges there is the tearing down of factories, schools, hospitals, and entire economies….It is a war over the foreign debt, one which has as its main weapon interest, a weapon more deadly than the atom bomb, more shattering than a laser beam.”

But outlawing fractional reserve banking and allowing countries to issue their own paper money debt-free and interest-free to fund the production and repair of public goods everyone can see and benefit from (roads & bridges, maglev rail, etc.) would be to put the criminals who head the IMF and World Bank out of business, and we all know NWO minions aren't about to call for that.

Another primary cause is the anti-labor/pro-land speculation tax system that nearly all governments impose on their respective populations:

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"This imperfect policy of non-intervention, or laissez-faire, led straight to a most hideous and dreadful economic exploitation; starvation wages, slum dwelling, killing hours, pauperism, coffin-ships, child-labour -- nothing like it had ever been seen in modern times....People began to say, perhaps naturally, if this is what State absentation comes to, let us have some State intervention.

"But the State had intervened; that was the whole trouble. The State had established one monopoly, -- the landlord's monopoly of economic rent, -- thereby shutting off great hordes of people from free access to the only source of human subsistence, and driving them into the factories to work for whatever Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bottles chose to give them. The land of England, while by no means nearly all actually occupied, was all legally occupied; and this State-created monopoly enabled landlords to satisfy their needs and desires with little exertion or none, but it also removed the land from competition with industry in the labour market, thus creating a huge, constant and exigent labour-surplus." [Emphasis original]

"It is incontrovertible, I think, that the rapidly-increasing destruction of the Amazon rain forest...is directly attributable to the fact that the Amazon basin is the only part of Brazil where free or cheap land is available, and this, in turn, is attributable to the fact that nearly four-fifths of Brazil's arable acreage is covered by sprawling latifundios, half of which are held by speculators who produce nothing. Were the artificial scarcity of available land in the rest of Brazil corrected, as the Georgist remedy would unquestionably do, pressure on the Amazon basin would obviously cease."

But you'll never hear NWO minions call for a reversal of that trend, either, because that would mean eliminating economic free-riding by overprivileged, politically-connected absentee landlords and slumlords.

All we'll get are the usual top-down, Nazi-style control measures that merely concentrate that much more political and economic power into the parasitic hands of the very criminal, psychopathic plutocrats who caused this mess in the first place.

"I am running for office""I sit at home and watch movies""I like to bitch about that list""I hand out out flyers""I pray""I infiltrate the UN and get insider info""I joined a preparation group who is seriously getting ready for the STHTF""I drink milk because I want strong bones"

The reason I put those election reforms at the top of my list of proposed reform measures is that -- thanks to an utterly rigged "election" system -- the government is not "our" government anymore (if indeed it ever was to begin with), but a government of, by and for a tiny group of criminal, parasitic, ruling-class oligarchs:

“Let me issue and control a Nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws”.

Letter written from London by the Rothschilds to their New York agents introducing their banking method into America: “The few who can understand the system will be either so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while, on the other hand, that great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that Capital derives from the system, will bear its burden without complaint and, perhaps, without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”

Nathan Rothschild said to the Commons Secret Committee on the question early in 1819: “In what line of business are you? – Mostly in the foreign banking line. “Have the goodness to state to the Committee in detail, what you conceive would be the consequence of an obligation imposed upon the Bank [of England, which he owned] to resume cash payments at the expiration of a year from the present time? – I do not think it can be done without very great distress to this country; it would do a great deal of mischief; we may not actually know ourselves what mischief it might cause. “Have the goodness to explain the nature of the mischief, and in what way it would be produced? – Money will be so very scarce, every article in this country will fall to such an enormous extent, that many persons will be ruined.”

The director of the Prussian Treasury wrote on a visit to London that Nathan Rothschild had as early as 1817: “.., incredible influence upon all financial affairs here in London. It is widely stated.., that he entirely regulates the rate of exchange in the City. His power as a banker is enormous”.

Austrian Prince Mettemich’s secretary wrote of the Rothschilds, as early as 1818, that: “… they are the richest people in Europe.”

Referring to James Rothschild, the poet Heinrich Heine said: “Money is the god of our times, and Rothschild is his prophet.”

James Rothschild built his fabulous mansion, called Ferrilres, 19 miles north-east of Paris. Wilhelm I, on first seeing it, exclaimed: “Kings couldn’t afford this. It could only belong to a Rothschild!”

Author Frederic Morton wrote that the Rothschilds had: “conquered the World more thoroughly, more cunningly, and much more lastingly than all the Caesars before…”

As Napoleon pointed out: “Terrorism, War & Bankruptcy are caused by the privatization of money, issued as a debt and compounded by interest “- he cancelled debt and interest in France – hence the Battle of Waterloo.

Some writers have claimed that Nathan Rothschild “warned that the United States would find itself involved in a most disastrous war if the bank’s charter were not renewed.” (do you see the similarities here? If you don’t play the game an economic disaster will fall on you and you will be destroyed.)

“There is but one power in Europe and that is Rothschild.” 19th century French commentator.

Lord Rothschild (Rockefellers and Rothschilds’ relatives) in his book The Shadow of a Great Man quotes a letter sent from Davidson on June 24, 1814 to Nathan Rothschild, “As long as a house is like yours, and as long as you work together with your brothers, not a house in the world will be able to compete with you, to cause you harm or to take advantage of you, for together you can undertake and perform more than any house in the world.” The closeness of the Rothschild brothers is seen in a letter from Soloman (Salmon) Rothschild to his brother Nathan on Feb. 28, 1815, “We are like the mechanism of a watch: each part is essential.” (2) This closeness is further seen in that of the 18 marriages made by Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s grandchildren – 16 were contracted between first cousins.

“Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” The Communist Manifesto. In the case of the Bolshevik revolution, Rothschilds/ Rockefellers’ Chase Bank owned the state. In the US, the FED owners “own” the state.

Rothschilds’ favorite saying who along with the Rockefellers are the major Illuminati Banking Dynasties: “Who controls the issuance of money controls the government!”

Nathan Rothschild said (1777-1836): “I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire and I control the British money supply.”

Rockefeller is reported to have said: “Competition is a sin”. “Own nothing. Control everything”. Because he wants to centralize control of everything and enslave us all, i.e. the modern Nimrod or Pharaoh.

"The True Story of the Bilderberg Group" and What They May Be Planning Now

A Review of Daniel Estulin's book

by Stephen Lendman

Global ResearchJune 1, 2009

For over 14 years, Daniel Estulin has investigated and researched the Bilderberg Group's far-reaching influence on business and finance, global politics, war and peace, and control of the world's resources and its money.

His book, "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group," was published in 2005 and is now updated in a new 2009 edition. He states that in 1954, "the most powerful men in the world met for the first time" in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, "debated the future of the world," and decided to meet annually in secret. They called themselves the Bilderberg Group with a membership representing a who's who of world power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others - some quietly by some accounts like Barack Obama and many of his top officials.

Always well represented are top figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the ECB's Jean-Claude Trichet, and Bank of England's Mervyn King.

For over half a century, no agenda or discussion topics became public nor is any press coverage allowed. The few invited fourth estate attendees and their bosses are sworn to secrecy. Nonetheless, Estulin undertook "an investigative journey" that became his life's work. He states:

"Slowly, one by one, I have penetrated the layers of secrecy surrounding the Bilderberg Group, but I could not have done this withot help of 'conscientious objectors' from inside, as well as outside, the Group's membership." As a result, he keeps their names confidential.

Whatever its early mission, the Group is now "a shadow world government....threaten(ing) to take away our right to direct our own destinies (by creating) a disturbing reality" very much harming the public's welfare. In short, Bilderbergers want to supplant individual nation-state sovereignty with an all-powerful global government, corporate controlled, and check-mated by militarized enforcement.

"Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe (and America) say what they never dare say in public."

Early in its history, Bilderbergers decided "to create an 'Aristocracy of purpose' between Europe and the United States (to reach consensus to rule the world on matters of) policy, economics, and (overall) strategy." NATO was essential for their plans - to ensure "perpetual war (and) nuclear blackmail" to be used as necessary. Then proceed to loot the planet, achieve fabulous wealth and power, and crush all challengers to keep it.

Along with military dominance, controlling the world's money is crucial for with it comes absolute control as the powerful 19th century Rothschild family understood. As the patriarch Amschel Rothschild once said: "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws."

Bilderbergers comprise the world's most exclusive club. No one buys their way in. Only the Group's Steering Committee decides whom to invite, and in all cases participants are adherents to One World Order governance run by top power elites.

According to Steering Committee rules:

"the invited guests must come alone; no wives, girlfriends, husbands or boyfriends. Personal assistants (meaning security, bodyguards, CIA or other secret service protectors) cannot attend the conference and must eat in a separate hall. (Also) The guests are explicitly forbidden from giving interviews to journalists" or divulge anything that goes on in meetings.

Host governments provide overall security to keep away outsiders. One-third of attendees are political figures. The others are from industry, finance, academia, labor and communications.

Meeting procedure is by Chatham House Rules letting attendees freely express their views in a relaxed atmosphere knowing nothing said will be quoted or revealed to the public. Meetings "are always frank, but do not always conclude with consensus."

Membership consists of annual attendees (around 80 of the world's most powerful) and others only invited occasionally because of their knowledge or involvement in relevant topics. Those most valued are asked back, and some first-timers are chosen for their possible later usefulness.

Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, for example, who attended in 1991. "There, David Rockefeller told (him) why the North American Free Trade Agreement....was a Bilderberg priority and that the group needed him to support it. The next year, Clinton was elected president," and on January 1, 1994 NAFTA took effect. Numerous other examples are similar, including who gets chosen for powerful government, military and other key positions.

Bilderberg Objectives

The Group's grand design is for "a One World Government (World Company) with a single, global marketplace, policed by one world army, and financially regulated by one 'World (Central) Bank' using one global currency." Their "wish list" includes:

-- "one international identity (observing) one set of universal values;"

-- centralized control of world populations by "mind control;" in other words, controlling world public opinion;

-- a New World Order with no middle class, only "rulers and servants (serfs)," and, of course, no democracy;

-- "a zero-growth society" without prosperity or progress, only greater wealth and power for the rulers;

-- manufactured crises and perpetual wars;

-- absolute control of education to program the public mind and train those chosen for various roles;

-- "centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies;" one size fits all globally;

-- using the UN as a de facto world government imposing a UN tax on "world citizens;"

-- expanding NAFTA and WTO globally;

-- making NATO a world military;

-- imposing a universal legal system; and

-- a global "welfare state where obedient slaves will be rewarded and non-conformists targeted for extermination."

It's time that We the People stop allowing ourselves to be distracted every election season by the same old pointless debate over which puppet of the global elite will screw us least, and start reclaiming from these "elite" our rightful control over our own government via the aggressive, non-partisan, issue-oriented political activism described in my initial post.

“Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” The Communist Manifesto.

To any relative newcomers who may be reading this: please understand that, despite what some may regard as Greenback-sounding phraseology in the 5th plank of Karl Marx's "Manifesto," the elite banking families who've repeatedly financed Marxist uprisings have always been vehemently opposed to debt-free Greenbacks, because they've always known that the institution of such a money system would put them out of business, and hence out of power (since money issued free of debt never has to paid back -- plus compound interest -- to private bankers).

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.”

In 2003, hundreds of thousands in the U.S. alone protested against the Iraq war before it had even started, yet the war was launched anyway.

Upon reading the following excerpt, most readers will likely have a much better understanding as to the reason why:

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J. Hunter O'Dell, one of [Martin Luther] King's early lieutenants in the movement, recognized the fixation with media developing among civil rights activists and lamented the consequences.

"We all recognize that technologically this is a media age," O'Dell wrote. "But it was disastrous for us to rely primarily upon these corporate forms of mass communication to get our message and analysis out to the public....In the end, it means a new kind of addiction to media rather than being in charge of our own agenda and relying on mass support as our guarantee that ultimately the news-covering apparatus must give recognition to our authority."

O'Dell's point is that the civil rights movement acquired its "authority" to articulate large political aspirations, not because network television came to Selma or Birmingham, but from the hundreds and even thousands of meetings in black churches, week after week, across the South over many years. The dramatic spectacles that appeared on TV were the product of those mobilizing sermons and dialogues, not the other way around.

The movement's organizing processes, O'Dell noted, contained all of the functional elements of a responsible political organization -- mass education and communication as well as continuing accountability between the leaders and the supporting throngs. "The power of any movement for democracy," O'Dell emphasized, "is always dependent on such reciprocal relations between the mass of people and their leadership."

These elements are missing, it seems, from much of the irregular citizens' politics that tries to emulate King's heroic model. Activists hold press conferences or arrange dramatic events to prod the political system. But patiently built reciprocal relationships between leaders and followers, the laborious tasks of education and communication, are often not even attempted. To be blunt, there is a hollowness behind many of the placards and politicians know it.

Succeeding generations of political activists, it often seems, copied the glamorous surfaces of the civil rights legacy -- the hot moments of national celebrity so well remembered -- while skipping over the hard part, the organizational sinew that was underneath.

Part I: "Economic Terrorism": The Consequences are Poverty and Mass Unemployment

by David DeGraw

Global Research, February 16, 2010 Amped Status - 2010-02-15

“The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.”

Yes, of course, we all have very strong differences of opinion on many issues.

However, like our Founding Fathers before us, we must put aside our differences and unite to fight a common enemy. It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us.

Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for a large majority of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep. . . and make no mistake, they have launched a war to eliminate the US middle class.

Unless we all unite and organize on common ground, our very way of life and the ideals that our country was founded upon will continue to unravel.

Before exposing exactly who the Economic Elite are, and discussing common sense ways in which we can defeat them, let’s take a look at how much damage they have already caused.

I: "Economic Terrorism": Surveying the Damage

America is the richest nation in history, yet we now have the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world with an unprecedented amount of Americans living in dire straights and over 50 million citizens already living in poverty.

The government has come up with clever ways to down play all of these numbers, but we have over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50% of US children will use a food stamp to eat at some point in their childhood. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every day. In 2009, one out of five US households didn’t have enough money to buy food. In households with children, this number rose to 24%, as the hunger rate among US citizens has now reached an all time high.

We also currently have over 50 million US citizens without healthcare. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32% increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60% of them, and over 75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have healthcare insurance. We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, we are forced to pay twice as much as other countries [.pdf] and the overall care we get in return ranks 37th in the world.

In total, Americans have lost $5 trillion from their pensions and savings since the economic crisis began and $13 trillion in the value of their homes. During the first full year of the crisis, workers between the age of 55 - 60, who have worked for 20 - 29 years, have lost an average of 25% off their 401k. “Personal debt has risen from 65% of income in 1980 to 125% today.” Over five million US families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million US families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25% of current mortgages underwater. Deutsche Bank has an even grimmer prediction: “The percentage of ‘underwater’ loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes.” Every day 10,000 US homes enter foreclosure. Statistics show that an increasing number of these people are not finding shelter elsewhere, there are now over 3 million homeless Americans, the fastest growing segment of the homeless population is single parents with children.

One place more and more Americans are finding a home is in prison. With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world - the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled “Incarceration Nation” revealed that “a new prison opens every week somewhere in America.”

Mass Unemployment

The government unemployment rate is deceptive on several levels. It doesn’t count people who are “involuntary part-time workers,” meaning workers who are working part-time but want to find full-time work. It also doesn’t count “discouraged workers,” meaning long-term unemployed people who lost hope and don’t consistently look for work. As time goes by, more and more people stop consistently looking for work and are discounted from the unemployment figure. For instance, in January, 1.1 million workers were eliminated from the unemployment total because they were “officially” labeled “discouraged workers.” So instead of the number rising, we will hear deceptive reports about unemployment leveling off.

On top of this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently discovered that 824,000 job losses were never accounted for due to a “modeling error” in their data. Even in their initial January data there appears to be a huge understating, with the newest report saying the economy lost 20,000 jobs. TrimTabs employment analysis, which has consistently provided more accurate data, “estimated that the U.S. economy shed 104,000 jobs in January.”

When you factor in all these uncounted workers — “involuntary part-time” and “discouraged workers” — the unemployment rate rises from 9.7% to over 20%. In total, we now have over 30 million US citizens who are unemployed or underemployed. The rarely cited “employment-participation” rate, which reveals the percentage of the population that is currently in the workforce, has now fallen to 64%.

Even based on the “official” unemployment rate, just to get back to the unemployment level of 4.6% that we had in 2007, we need to create over 10 million new jobs, and most every serious economist will tell you that these jobs are not coming back. In fact, we are still consistently shedding jobs, on just one day, January 27th, several companies announced new cuts of more than 60,000 jobs.

Due to the length of this crisis already, millions of Americans are reaching a point where the unemployment benefits that they have been surviving off of are coming to an end. More workers have already been out of work longer than at any point since statistics have been recorded, with over six million now unemployed for over six months. A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits last year, causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to go broke.

Most economists believe that the unemployment rate will remain high for the foreseeable future. What will happen when we have millions of laid-off workers without any unemployment benefits to save them?

Working More for Less

The millions struggling to find work are just part of the story. Due to the fact that we now have a record high six people for every one job opening, companies have been able to further increase the workload on their remaining employees. They have been able to increase the amount of hours Americans are working, reduce wages and drastically cut back on benefits. Even though Americans were already the most productive workers in the world before the economic crisis, in the third quarter of 2009, average worker productivity increased by an annualized rate of 9.5%, at the same time unit labor cost decreased by 5.2%. This has led to record profits for many companies. Of the 220 companies in the S&P 500 who have reported fourth-quarter results thus far, 78% of them had “better-than-expected profits” with earnings 17% above expectations, “the highest for any quarter since Thomson Reuters began tracking data.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national median wage was only $32,390 per year in 2008, and median household income fell by 3.6% while the unemployment rate was 5.8%. With the unemployment rate now at 10%, median income has been falling at a 5% rate and is expected to continue its decline. Not surprisingly, Americans’ job satisfaction level is now at an all time low.

There are also a growing number of employed people who, despite having a job, are still living in poverty. There are at least 15 million workers who now fall into this rapidly growing category. $32,390 a year is not going to get you far in today’s economy, and half of the country is making less than that. This is why many Americans are now forced to work two jobs to provide for their family to hopefully make ends meet.

A Crime Against Humanity

The mainstream news media will numb us to this horrifying reality by endlessly talking about the latest numbers, but they never piece them together to show you the whole devastating picture, and they rarely show you all the immense individual suffering behind them. This is how they “normalize the unthinkable” and make us become passive in the face of such a high causality count.

Behind each of these numbers, is a tremendous amount of misery, the physical toll is only outdone by the severe psychological toll. Anyone who has had to put off medical care, or who couldn’t get medical care for one of their family members due to financial circumstances, can tell you about the psychological toll that is on top of the physical suffering. Anyone who has felt the stress of wondering how they were going to get their child’s next meal or their own, or the stress of not knowing how you are going to pay the mortgage, rent, electricity or heat bill, let alone the car payment, gas, phone, cable or internet bill.

These are all basic things that every person should be able to easily afford in a technologically advanced society such as ours. The reason why we struggle with these things is because the Economic Elite have robbed us all. This amount of suffering in the United States of America is literally a crime against humanity.

Part II: The American Nightmare: US Economic Elite Wages War on the American People

by David DeGraw

Global Research, February 20, 2010 Amped Status - 2010-02-17

“The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.”

-- Noam Chomsky

As a record number of US citizens are struggling to get by, many of the largest corporations are experiencing record-breaking profits, and CEOs are receiving record-breaking bonuses. How could this be happening; how did we get to this point?

The Economic Elite have escalated their attack on US workers over the past few years; however, this attack began to build intensity in the 1970s. In 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1 the average worker made. Due to technological advancements, production and profit levels exploded from 1970 - 2000. With the lion’s share of increased profits going to the CEOs, this pay ratio dramatically rose to $90 for CEOs to $1 for the average worker.

As ridiculous as that seems, an in-depth study in 2004 on the explosion of CEO pay revealed that, including stock options and other benefits, CEO pay is more accurately $500 to $1.

Paul Buchheit, from DePaul University, revealed, “From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America tripled their after-tax percentage of our nation’s total income, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop over 20%.” Robert Freeman added, “Between 2002 and 2006, it was even worse: an astounding three quarters of all the economy’s growth was captured by the top 1%.”

Due to this, the United States already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the average worker much harder than CEOs, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high. The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all-time record.

Meanwhile, 2009 was a record-breaking year for Wall Street bonuses, as firms issued $150 billion to their executives. 100% of these bonuses are a direct result of our tax dollars, so if we used this money to create jobs, instead of giving it to a handful of top executives, we could have paid an annual salary of $30,000 to 5 million people.

So while US workers are now working more hours and have become dramatically more productive and profitable, our pay is actually declining and all the dramatic increases in wealth are going straight into the pockets of the Economic Elite.

If our income had kept pace with compensation distribution rates established in the early 1970s, we would all be making at least three times as much as we are currently making. How different would your life be if you were making $120,000 a year, instead of $40,000?

So it should come as no surprise to see that we now have the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world and the highest inequality of wealth in our nation’s history. The backbone of America, a hard-working middle class that has made our country a world leader, has been devastated.

Now that we have a better understanding of how our income has been suppressed over the past forty years, let’s take a look at how the economy has been designed to take the limited money we receive and put it into the hands of the Economic Elite as well.

Costs of Living

Outside of the workplace, in almost all our costs of living the system is now blatantly rigged against us. Let’s take a look at it, starting with our tax system.

In total, the average US citizen is forced to give up approximately 30% of our income in taxes. This tax system is now strategically designed to flow straight into the hands of the Economic Elite. A huge percentage of our tax dollars ultimately ends up in their pockets. The past decade proves that — whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats running the government — our tax money is not going into our community; it is going into the pockets of the billionaires who have bought off both parties - it is obscene.

For an example of how this system flows to the Economic Elite, just look at the Wall Street “bailout.” The real size of the bailout is estimated to be $14 trillion - and could end up costing trillions more than that. By now you are probably also sick of hearing about the bailout, but stop and think about this for a moment… Do you comprehend how much $14 trillion is?

What could be accomplished with this money is almost beyond common comprehension.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg that has hit us. On top of the trillions given to the Wall Street elite, we already have a record $12.3 trillion in national debt - and we now have to pay $500 billion in interest to the Economic Elite on this debt every year, yet another way they are milking us dry. When you add in unfunded liabilities owed, like social security payments, we actually owe a stunning $74 trillion. That adds up to a debt of $242,000 for every man, woman and child in America.

In 2009, just over $1 trillion tax dollars were spent on the military. It’s safe to say that at least $350 billion of that was needlessly wasted.

When you research our tax system you see an unprecedented level of waste and fraud rampant throughout most expenditures. Our tax system is a national disaster of epic proportions. It is literally an organized criminal operation that continues to rob us in broad daylight, with zero accountability.

Politicians and mainstream “news” outlets will not tell you this, but most every serious economist knows that due to so much theft and debt created in the tax system, the only way to fix things, other than stopping the theft and seizing the trillions that have been stolen, will be for the government to cut important social funding and drastically raise our taxes. Other than the record national debt, many states are running record deficits and “barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services.” Our nation’s biggest state economies, like California and New York, are the ones in most trouble.

To merely say that things will not be improving economically is to be a delusional optimist. The truth that you will not hear: we have been hit by an economic deathblow and the United States lays in ruins.

It’s not just this criminal tax system; the theft is now built into all our costs of living.

Trillions more in our spending on food and fuel have been stolen due to fraudulent stock transactions and overcharging. Just ten years ago, in 2000, American families paid 7% of our income on food and fuel. We now pay 20%. This drastic increase is primarily driven by fraudulent market manipulation that drives up stock prices. Congress uncovered this in 2006, as part of the Enron investigation. They found that companies manipulated the oil market to create major spikes in stock values, but then Congress didn’t do anything about it. Nothing to see here, just move on.

One of the reasons why foreclosure rates are so high is because the percentage of income Americans pay on their housing has risen to 34%.

So for these basic necessities - taxes, food, fuel, shelter and medical bills - we have already lost 92% of our limited income. Then factor in ever-increasing interest rates on credit cards, student loans, rising prices for cable, internet, phone, bank fees, etc., etc., etc…. We are being robbed and gouged in all costs of living, in every aspect of our life. No wonder bankruptcies are skyrocketing and the number of people suffering from psychological depression has reached an epidemic level.

The American worker is screwed over every step of the way, and it all starts with the explosion in the cost of a college education. This is one of the Economic Elite’s most devastating weapons. To have any chance of succeeding in this economy, it is commonly believed that you must attend the best college possible. With the rising costs involved, today’s students are graduating with record levels of debt from student loans. At the same time, the unemployment rate among recent college graduates has risen higher than the national average, and those who do find work are making significantly less than they expected to make. This combination of extreme debt and reduced pay has crippled an entire generation right from the start and has put them in a vicious cycle of spiraling debt that they will struggle with for the rest of their lives. The most recent college graduates are now known as a “lost generation.”

The American dream has turned into a nightmare. The economic system is a sophisticated prison cell; the indentured servant is now an indebted wage slave; whips and chains have evolved into debts.

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt.”

-- John Adams

Concealing National Wealth

“Liberty in the concrete signifies release from the impact of particular oppressive forces; emancipation from something once taken as a normal part of human life but now experienced as bondage…. Today, it signifies liberation from material insecurity and from the coercions and repressions that prevent multitudes from participation in the vast cultural resources that are at hand.”

When you take the time to research and analyze the wealth that has gone to the economic top one percent, you begin to realize just how much we have been robbed. Trillions upon trillions of dollars that could make the lives of all hard-working Americans much easier have been strategically funneled into the coffers of the Economic Elite. The denial of wealth is the key to the Economic Elite’s power. An entire generation of massive wealth creation has been strategically withheld from 99% of the US population.

The US public doesn’t have any understanding of how much wealth has been generated and concentrated into the hands of the Economic Elite over the past 40 years; there is no historical frame of reference. This withholding of wealth is truly the greatest crime against humanity in the history of civilization.

What could be done with all the money that has been hoarded by the Economic Elite is extraordinary!

Let’s consider what we could do with the money that has been stolen from us. On top of what should be our average six-figure yearly income, we could have:

* Free health care for every American,* A free 4 bedroom home for every American family,* 5% tax rate for 99% of Americans,* Drastically improved public education and free college for all,* Significantly improved public transportation and infrastructure,

The list goes on…

This is not some far-fetched fantasy. These are all things that Franklin D. Roosevelt talked about doing in the 1940s, long before the explosion of wealth creation in our technologically advanced global economy. The money for all this is already there, stashed into the claws of the Economic Elite. The denial of wealth to the masses is the key to the Economic Elite’s power. Outside of outdated and obsolete economic models and theories — and incredibly short-sighted greed — there is no reason why all this money should be kept in the hands of a few, at the immense suffering and expense of the many.

If Americans could just understand how much wealth is being withheld from us, we would have a massive uprising and the Economic Elite would be swept away, into the history books alongside the evil despots of the past.

“For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

-- George Orwell

Now that we have a better understanding of how the Economic Elite dominate our lives, let’s take a look at exactly who they are….

Part III: The Axis of Greed: The Nature and Structure of the Economic Elite

by David DeGraw

Global Research, February 27, 2010 Amped Status - 2010-02-19

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes… As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

I don’t view the Economic Elite as a small group of men who meet in secrecy to control the world. They do feature elements of conspiracy and are clearly composed of secretive organizations like the Bilderberg Group - this is not a conspiracy theory, this is a conspiracy fact - but as a whole the Economic Elite are primarily united by ideology. They’re made up of thousands of individuals who subscribe to an ideology of exploitation and the belief that wealth and resources need to be concentrated into the fewest hands possible (theirs), at the expense of the many.

That being said, there are some definite lead players in this group and it is important that we are not too vague and expose the individuals who publicly lead them. Focusing on the fundamental structure of the US economy, we have people like Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, John Mack, Vikram Pandit, John Thain, Hank Greenberg, Ken Lewis, John J. Castellani, Edward Yingling and Tom Donohue.

In total, the Economic Elite are made up of about 0.5% of the US population. At the center of this group is the Business Roundtable, an organization representing Fortune 500 CEOs that is also interlocked with several lead elite organizations. Most Americans have never heard of the Business Roundtable. However, in my analysis, it is the most influential and powerful Economic Elite organization.

“The Business Roundtable joined the Business Council at the heart of both the corporate community and the policy-formation network and now has the most powerful role…. The Roundtable’s interlocks with other policy groups and with think tanks are presented (below).”

The Roundtable’s first year of operation was 1972, which coincided with the beginning of the CEO salary explosion, and has been the driving force behind the unprecedented concentration of wealth since their inception. Their dominance over the US economy and government is unparalleled. Their members are a Who’s Who of everything that is wrong with our economy. Here is a partial list of some of their lead members:

The Business Roundtable is the most powerful activist organization in the United States. Their leaders regularly lobby members of Congress behind closed doors and often meet privately with the President and his administration. Any legislation that affects Roundtable members has almost zero possibility of passing without their support.

For three major examples, look at healthcare and financial reform, along with the military budget. The healthcare reform bill devolved into what amounts to an insurance industry bailout and was drastically altered by Roundtable lobbyists representing interests like WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. Obama and Congress are trying to please the Roundtable with a bill that supports their interests. This led to the dropping of the public-option put forth in the House bill. However, when it came to finishing the bill, Roundtable members began to walk away from the process. That’s the real reason why the reform bill has stalled. Obama will be meeting with the Roundtable on February 24th, in hopes of getting healthcare reform back on track. After that meeting, he will then hold a bipartisan healthcare meeting with members of congress.

Also being addressed in Obama’s upcoming meeting with the Roundtable are issues concerning financial reform. Almost every aspect of financial reform has been D.O.A. thanks to Roundtable lobbyists representing the interests of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, Master Card and American Express. They even pushed to make sure Ben Bernanke was reconfirmed as the head of the Federal Reserve and they have also guided Obama into focusing on deficit reduction, now that their member companies are healthy again and making record profits after receiving trillions in government subsidies. The Roundtable played a pivotal role in the appointment of Hank Paulson, formerly the CEO of Roundtable member Goldman Sachs, who replaced Roundtable member John Snow as US Treasury Secretary. The Roundtable also strongly lobbied on behalf of current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner [.pdf] and White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers [.pdf]. Although there has been recent talk of Geithner being replaced at the Treasury, the lead choice to replace him is Jamie Dimon, Roundtable member and CEO of JP Morgan Chase.

The drastic rise in military spending is also a result of Roundtable lobbyists pushing the interests of large military companies like Boeing and Bechtel, along with the largest oil companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, Hess and Chevron.

The Roundtable tells politicians what they want done, and the politicians do it. At times, Roundtable members even write the laws themselves. On financial reform alone, those representing Wall Street firms gave “$42 million to lawmakers, mostly to members of the House and Senate banking committees and House and Senate leaders.” During the 2008 election cycle, they gave $155 million: $88 million to Democrats and $67 million to Republicans. Keep in mind, this is the spending on just their financial reform initiative. When it came to health reform, they gave even more.

When it comes to getting elected, over 90% of the time the candidate who simply spends more money on their campaign wins the election. The Roundtable and politicians recognize this fact, so the overwhelming majority of current elected officials relied heavily on campaign funding from Roundtable members, including President Obama.

Shortly after Obama’s inauguration he held a meeting with Roundtable members at the St. Regis Hotel. The president of the Business Roundtable is John J. Castellani. Throughout the first nine months of Obama’s presidency, Castellani met with him at the White House more than any other person, with the exception of Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue. If you look at the records of people who have spent the most time with Obama in the White House, other than these two, another frequent visitor is Edward Yingling, the president of the American Bankers Association.

These organizations - the Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association - along with the Federal Reserve, a secretive quasi-government private institution, form the center of the Economic Elite’s power structure. Since the bailout, the Federal Reserve has been working closely with private firm BlackRock. Due to this relationship, BlackRock has emerged as the world’s largest money manager and now manages more assets than the Federal Reserve. They also “manage many of the Treasury Department’s big investments.”

On a global level, you have economic institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and international treaties like NAFTA. These organizations already form a de facto world government that has rights beyond our constitutional rights and national sovereignty. If the WTO makes a ruling that goes against US law, the WTO ruling supersedes US law and wins out.

“The World Trade Organization is the most powerful legislative and judicial body in the world. By promoting the ‘free trade’ agenda of multinational corporations above the interests of local communities, working families, and the environment, the WTO has systematically undermined democracy around the world…. Unlike United Nations treaties, the International Labor Organization conventions, or multilateral environmental agreements, WTO rules can be enforced through sanctions. This gives the WTO more power than any other international body. The WTO’s authority even eclipses national governments.”

“When the Bank and the Fund lend money to debtor countries, the money comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called ’structural adjustment policies.’ These policies—or SAPs, as they are sometimes called—require debtor governments to open their economies to penetration by foreign corporations, allowing access to the country’s workers and environment at bargain basement prices. Structural adjustment policies mean across-the-board privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They mean the slashing of government budgets, leading to cutbacks in spending on health care and education…. And, as their imposition in country after country in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has shown, they lead to deeper inequality and environmental destruction.”

In addition to dominating our political and economic system, the Economic Elite have already created their own private military. Their private military is now more powerful than the US military. As mentioned earlier, private mercenaries now outnumber US soldiers and receive the lion’s share of military spending.

Corporations like SAIC, Blackwater, Bechtel, Raytheon and Halliburton are composed of the most elite worldwide intelligence and military officers. These are the highly profitable and powerful entities that the Economic Elite turn to when national militaries and intelligence agencies - like the CIA, FBI or other government run entities - can’t get the job done.

For instance, SAIC, a “stealth company” that most people have never heard of, is considered to be the brains of the entire US intelligence apparatus, more powerful than the much more popularly known CIA, NSA and FBI - all agencies that SAIC is deeply intertwined with. I urge you to research SAIC to get a crash course in how the true power structure functions. You can start by reading an excellent investigative report by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele titled, “Washington’s $8 billion shadow.”

The Economic Elite dominate US intelligence and military operations. Other than the obvious geo-strategic reasons, the never-ending and ever-expanding War on Terror’s objective is to drain the US population of more resources and further rob US taxpayers, while using our tax money to create a private military that is more powerful than the US military.

I think any logical person can see the ominous implications of having such a vast and powerful private military and intelligence complex, created for and used, in secrecy, by the Economic Elite. Outside of the blatant economic policy attacks, heavily armed and sophisticated covert powers led by small groups of Economic Elite are now a serious risk and present danger.

In conclusion, these economic and government policy forming organizations, along with their private military and intelligence corporations, form the core of the Economic Elite power structure.

“I think one has to say it’s not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems.”

Although most of the Economic Elite live and operate inside the US, they are not concerned for our future. To them, the entire world is theirs and they work intimately with other elites throughout the world against the interests of the US public. Ever since the days of Henry Ford, the Economic Elite have needed a thriving US middle class to increase growth and profits, but now, in the global economy, they view the US middle class as obsolete. They increasingly look globally for profits and they would rather pay cheap labor in countries like China and India. On top of the millions of jobs they have already shipped overseas to increase profits at our expense, they are planning to ship an additional 25% of current US jobs overseas as well.

They now see us as the biggest obstacle to their continued consolidation of wealth and resources. This is why they have stepped up their attack on us.

If you want further proof of this, all one needs to do is study the Wall Street bailout. The entire bailout is strategically designed to eliminate the US middle class. Every time you hear the word “bailout,” you should think “coup d’état.” Here is the definition of coup d’état:

“A coup d’état or coup for short, is the sudden unconstitutional deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment… to replace the deposed government with another…. A coup d’état succeeds when the usurpers establish their legitimacy if the attacked government fail to thwart them, by allowing their (strategic, tactical, political) consolidation and then receiving the deposed government’s surrender; or the acquiescence of the populace and the non-participant military forces.

"Typically, a coup d’état uses the extant government’s power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak says: ‘A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder’, thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d’état.”

The bailout was a financial coup, an intelligence operation to seize control of the US economy and tax system. It is similar to what the Economic Elite have done through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in many other countries throughout the world. It is clearly a case of economic imperialism. When financial coups are carried out in other countries, they call it a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The end result is the theft of working class wealth, the privatization of public functions and resources, rising unemployment, the elimination of the middle class and increasing taxation and debt that turns the overwhelming majority of the nation into a peasant class. This is exactly the track we are on now.

The success of the coup is clear by the control of the US Treasury by Goldman Sachs criminal masterminds Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, and the continued control of the Federal Reserve by Ben Bernanke.

In 1970, Hank Paulson began his career in the Pentagon working for Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. In 1972, he then moved to the White House, where he worked for the Nixon Administration. He was “the assistant to John Ehrlichman during the events of the Watergate scandal for which Ehrlichman was convicted, and sentenced to prison.” After Paulson’s disgraced exit from the political world, he joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, eventually becoming CEO in 1999 when he led an effort to force out Goldman’s previous CEO John Corzine. While leading Goldman, Paulson developed very intimate relations with members of the Chinese elite, visiting the country over 70 times.

In 2004, during his time as Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson personally led a successful effort to get the SEC to remove the “net capital rule,” which was a “requirement that their brokerages hold reserve capital that limited their leverage and risk exposure.” This was the biggest reason why the economic crisis happened. With the “net capital rule” out of the way, Goldman Sachs and other major Wall Street firms with over $5 billion in assets were free to engage in high risk/high reward behavior. This led to the housing bubble with the creation of high risk speculation, essentially rigged Ponzi-style scams like “mortgage-backed securities, credit derivatives, and credit default swaps… and other exotic structured finance instruments that only highly-trained mathematicians understand, based on models that are beyond the comprehension of most traders.”

After making over $700 million on these shady high risk activities that created a ticking time bomb in our economy, Paulson left Goldman Sachs to run the US Treasury. Shortly after that, the speculative trading scams blew up, and there was the man who played the most pivotal role in causing the economy to crash now running the US Treasury and in charge of “maneuvering” trillions of dollars in national wealth to “fix” the economy. It was time for Paulson, along with his close confidant Tim Geithner, then heading the NY Federal Reserve Bank, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, to engineer the greatest theft of wealth in history with the “bailout.”

Paulson quickly brought in several former Goldman Sachs partners to help him engineer the coup. A pivotal Paulson asset was former Goldman executive Dan Jester, who Paulson quickly hired as a “contractor.” As Robert E. Prasch recently reported, “Jester was never appointed by Congress or otherwise vetted before taking up his role as the Treasury’s de facto central player in the crucial decisions that marked that fall’s bailout of Wall Street.” Paulson’s most publicized move was the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). This was a blatant no-strings attached giveaway of taxpayer money, handed directly to Wall Street’s biggest players. To oversee the TARP operation, Paulson brought in Goldman Sachs Vice President Neel Kashkari.

Another egregious unilateral move by Paulson was installing Edward Liddy, one of his former board members at Goldman Sachs, as CEO of AIG. Liddy was the Chairman of Goldman’s Audit Committee, making him the most knowledgeable person regarding Goldman’s collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Paulson knew these CDOs would go bust because they were based on fraudulent activities, essentially a massive Ponzi scheme. So Paulson and Goldman Sachs covered their risk by insuring them through AIG, making it pivotal to save AIG and have one of his most trusted allies run the company. With Liddy in place, billions of taxpayer dollars were secretly funneled by the Geithner-led NY Federal Reserve through AIG to Goldman Sachs and several other Wall Street elite counterparties. Without the AIG bailout, Goldman Sachs would have collapsed as a result of their own Ponzi scheme.

Every step of the way, the economic terrorist organization led by Paulon, Geithner and Bernanke held our economy hostage by declaring that all their demands must be met or the entire economy would be destroyed, as a result of the very actions the players being rewarded had taken. (I don’t use the words “economic terrorists” as hyperbole. The threat posed by them and the amount of death, destruction and misery they have already caused the United States is much greater than that [allegedly] caused by Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda - it’s not even close.)

By looking the other way, the SEC, Congress and Presidents Bush and Obama are complicit. An analysis of actions taken, or most often not taken, by the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties prove that they are now accomplices. They have not only let it happen; they continue to look the other way and have been stonewalling laws, investigations and prosecutions in what is cearly criminal activity.

If we had a nation of law, none of these things would have happened. This proves to anyone who cares to look that we now live in a Banana Republic. Our democracy has clearly become a farce.

The overwhelming majority of our politicians are now on the Economic Elite payroll. This financial coup started under Hank Paulson in the Bush Administration and has been carried through, without even the slightest hitch, under Geithner in the Obama Administration, and all along Ben Bernanke has been leading the Federal Reserve. Bernanke’s reconfirmation shows you who the co-conspirators are - just look at the members of Congress who voted for it.

All three branches of our government are now complicit in what is literally the greatest theft of wealth in history, along with a mainstream “news” media that keeps going about their “reporting,” as if this wasn’t a crime, business as usual. Nothing to see here…

Obama’s Role

As hard as it is for many Americans to admit, after a year in office it is now obvious, to those who study policy decisions, that Obama’s rhetoric is very far from the reality of his actions. Outside of the tough talk Obama gives concerning “Wall Street Bankers,” all evidence clearly demonstrates that he is their puppet. The list of decisions that he has made to support the Economic Elite at our expense is already extensive.

As mentioned before, the fact that the bailout started under Bush and went straight through without a hitch under Obama is proof enough. On top of this, Obama’s campaign was heavily financed by Goldman Sachs, and prior to the election Obama often spoke with Paulson. An analysis of phone records shows that Obama and Paulson engaged in 26 direct calls prior to the election. “Paulson placed more than twice as many individual outgoing calls to [candidate] Obama (14) as to President Bush (6).”

Right from the start he appointed Tim Geithner, Paulson’s right-hand man, to run the US Treasury. Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, then became Geithner’s Chief of Staff with the direct approval of Obama. Geithner has surrounded himself with many aides that formerly worked for Goldman Sachs, “none of whom faced Senate confirmation.” Obama also allowed Adam Storch, a Goldman Sachs VP, to become “the first chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division.” Obama even “nominated Goldman Sachs executive Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures markets.” Gensler was “a high-level Treasury official in a 2000,” when he helped create a “law that exempted the $58 trillion credit default swap market from oversight.” Another major player in the economic collapse was Larry Summers, who Obama quickly appointed as White House National Economic Council Director.

All of this is, in essence, the final stage of a coup d’état, with Obama now serving as their puppet.

Obama clearly has not held the thieves accountable. He has emboldened them in ways that led to record setting profits and bonuses - bonuses that are 100% a direct result of our tax money. He let them take the money, keep the money, and now he lets them continue to makeeven more money.

Obama always deceptively frames the bailout discussion in relation to the $700 billion TARP program. He, along with the mainstream media, always seems to gloss over the fact that the bailout is much more than just the TARP program. TARP is a mere 2% of this multifaceted scam.

His proposal of a tax on Wall Street firms to get some of our tax money back is estimated to bring in $90 billion over the next ten years. That works out to $9 billion a year, compare that to the $150 billion in bonuses handed out by these same firms… just in the past year! The top Wall Street firms would no longer even exist if we didn’t bail them out. Their profits are a direct result of our tax money. If Obama is serious about getting our money back, 100% of the record-breaking bonus money that these thieves gave themselves should be going back into the tax system that it came from to pay down our national debt, lower our tax rates and create jobs.

The $150 billion in bonuses handed out this year cost you $500 of your hard-earned money. For a family of four, that’s $2000 that was taken from you and your family just this year and given directly to Wall Street bonuses. Think about that… Your personal money was taken from you and your family, and given directly to Goldman Sachs CEO Llyod Blankfein. In fact, your direct gift to Wall Street is much more than that; the $2000 your family lost was just for this year’s bonuses, much more of your money was given away in the bailout. The real size of the bailout is estimated to be $14 trillion, which works out to be $46,662 for every man, woman and child in America.

And now that Obama has given trillions of our dollars to Wall Street, he is all of a sudden concerned about our national deficit. That is disgraceful! When it came to the Economic Elite he could give away trillions, but when it comes to the social infrastructure of the American public and creating job programs, we all of a sudden have to be tight with our tax money and make “painful choices.” When looking at Obama’s latest $100 billion jobs program, again, compare that to the $150 billion in bonuses. If you want to know if Obama is serious about creating jobs, just look at where he gave his big “Jobs Speech” - at the Business Roundtable affiliated Brookings Institution. Thus again, confirming where his true loyalties lie.

Obama’s sudden change of heart after the Massachusetts Senate election defeat is still more empty rhetoric. His new found support for Paul Volcker, and his proposals to bring back Glass-Steagall type laws to prevent another economic catastrophe sound great on the surface, but then you find out that Wall Street firms have already figured out ways around these proposed laws. While it would be great to have Volcker creating the rules over the Goldman Sachs-led team at the Treasury now, he is himself a former Federal Reserve Chairman who represents JP Morgan Chase interests. Jamie Dimon, current JP Morgan Chase CEO and Business Roundtable member, is considered by Obama to be a possible replacement for Geithner at the Treasury. Replacing Goldman Sachs interests with JP Morgan interests is hardly change for the 99% of Americans who have seen their interests ignored thus far. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are two heads of the same monster.

An analysis of the “Volcker Rules” shows you the essence of what Obama is all about. The “Volcker Rules” are just more propaganda. First off, the rules do not go far enough. Simon Johnson testified before the Senate Banking Committee and summed them up by saying: “while the principles behind these proposed rules are exactly on target… the specific rule changes would need to be much tougher if they are to have any effect.” Johnson earlier exposed the “Volcker Rules” to merely be a “marketing slogan.”

Jeff Madrick, writing for the Roosevelt Institute, rightly questioned if Obama’s economists even did their homework when putting together the rule. “What is disturbing is how poorly the Volcker rule has been thought through. When first announced, it sounded like a worthy and needed step in the right direction, and a suggestion the Obama team was waking up to reality. But I also expected more sophisticated details to come. So far, there are none… it looks like they didn’t give it much thought before announcing the plan. This is a critical error in judgment.” Even if the flawed laws make it to the Senate floor, the Banking Committee has come out strongly against them as being too little, too late. To sum this all up, this is another case of Obama trying to make it look like he’s doing something, when in reality, he isn’t doing anything.

This is similar to Obama’s $75 billion taxpayer funded foreclosure-prevention program that has been a spectacular failure in stemming the foreclosure crisis. The Obama Administration knew the program wasn’t working from the start, but they just sat back and let it continue to fail, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars in the process.

Even Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the TARP program, said the following in his January 30th report to Congress: “It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the [financial] system have been addressed to date…. Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car.” Now that the “Too Big to Fail” Wall Street elite know that the government will come in to bail them out, they are engaging in even riskier behavior than before.

As President Theodore Roosevelt once declared in a situation much like our current crisis, “Corporation cunning has developed faster than the law of nation or state. Corporations have found ways to steal long before we have found that they were susceptible to punishment for theft. But sooner or later, unless there is a season of readjustment, there will come a riotous, wicked, murderous day of atonement…. These fools on Wall Street think that they can go on forever! They can’t!”

It is hard to face the fact that we have been so taken advantage of and abandoned by the very people we supported and had put our hope and faith into. Americans need to understand that Obama, along with most of the Democrats and Republicans, are not looking out for our best interests.

Part V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy — The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the USA

By David DeGrawAmpedStatus ReportFebruary 23rd, 2010

“The conflicting propaganda of opposing parties is essentially what leads to political abstention. But this is not the abstention of the free spirit which asserts itself; it is the result of resignation, the external symptom of a series of inhibitions. Such a man has not decided to abstain; under diverse pressures, subjected to shocks and distortions, he can no longer (even if he wanted to) perform a political act. What is even more serious is that this inhibition not only is political, but also progressively takes over the whole of his being and leads to a general attitude of surrender.”

-- Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes

The primary reason why the Economic Elite have gained such dominance is their commitment to psychological operations that divide-and-conquer the US public. They use their overwhelming influence over mainstream media outlets and political candidates in very clever ways to divide us.

It is known among political scientists that powerful forces always seek to gain control of pre-existing social and political institutions so they can usurp their powers. The Economic Elite gained control of both the Democratic and Republican political parties because they knew that hardworking Americans loyally followed these parties, and we believed these parties were looking out for our best interests. We have, for the most part, been lifelong Republicans or lifelong Democrats, but until we see that our favored party has been seized by power and greed addicted interests, we will all continue to lose. These are extremely hard truths to face, but until we face them, we will continue our decline.

With half the US population loyal to Democrats and the other half loyal to Republicans, gaining control of both these parties meant total control for them. The past decade is testament to their total control of both parties.

In manufactured public opinion, Obama represented a far left swing in US politics, and Bush represented a far right swing, and these two supposed polar opposites also had a Congress overwhelmingly run by members of their own party. Did we get drastically different policies? In what matters most, in both cases, the results were the same: more money and power for the Economic Elite and the continued decline of the US middle class. This fact is now undeniable.

Yes, there are definite differences in their rhetoric and on some social issues, but this is the key to the psychological operations, to the divide-and-conquer strategy that they use so effectively.

To distract and divide us, they use rhetoric on social issues like religion, gay marriage, abortion, etc., all serious and significant issues that we bitterly disagree on, but in the overall picture, these issues are secondary to the larger, more fundamental political and economic issues that lead to our wealth being stolen from us, and ultimately, our lives being increasingly dominated by a small few.

Bush appealed to conservative Republicans and then ran up the deficit to record levels. Obama appealed to liberal Democrats, but increased war spending and support for Wall Street billionaires. In both cases, the candidates severely divided the US middle class, but in the policy decisions that mattered most, they both sided with the economic top one percent at the expense of hardworking Americans.

Just look at the last few election cycles. In 2006 and 2008 US citizens rose up in record-breaking numbers to kick out the Republicans in power, whom they felt had betrayed them. Now, with the Democrats in power, the consensus seems to be that in the 2010 mid-term elections we will vote for Republicans and kick out the Democrats who have failed to deliver on the much needed and promised changes.

Do you not see the ridiculous nature of this divide-and-conquer strategy? This is a vicious cycle that will continue to lead to our destruction.

Psychological Operations 101: Obama Vs. Fox News

For those of us who are strong enough to see beyond our propaganda-induced preconceptions and prejudices, the insidious nature of the Economic Elite’s divide-and-conquer strategy is on full display in the feud between Obama and Fox News. About half of the country loves Obama and hates Fox News, and the other half loves Fox News but hates Obama. They both use very effective propaganda to seduce their followers. However, as hard as it is for people who love one of them to admit, they both serve the same masters.

Once again, let’s look at Goldman Sachs. They financed Obama’s campaign and he has rewarded them with policies that have led to them making record-breaking profits, instead of investigating them for the many illegal activities they participated in and continue to take part in.

On the other side of this psychological operation, you have Fox News. When was the last time you saw Fox News doing an investigation into the illegal practices of Goldman Sachs? Even the Obama-appointed Tim Geithner, the Economic Elite’s main man on the economy, escapes the significant focus of Fox News’ powerful attack force.

Looking at the Business Roundtable, a significant majority of Obama’s campaign funding came from Roundtable members and, as mentioned earlier, he frequently meets with Roundtable members. On the other hand, Fox News is owned by Roundtable member Rupert Murdoch, and Fox relies heavily on advertising money from Roundtable members. Rupert Murdoch even supported Obama over McCain. As someone who monitors Fox News, I can’t recall the last time I heard Fox reporting on the activities of the Business Roundtable, not that any mainstream “news” companies do.

The list of similarities between the two, when it comes to exposing and holding the Economic Elite accountable, is extensive. So here you have an excellent divide-and-conquer psychological operation. Fox News declares Obama the enemy, and Obama declares Fox the enemy, yet the Economic Elite remain in the shadows, behind the scenes, untouched and continuing their plunder.

Just think of all the misplaced outraged spent on these two puppets. Sure, people have many reasons to like and dislike both, but imagine if all the diehard Obama-haters focused their rage on the people who put Obama in power, and if the diehard Fox-haters stopped criticizing everything Fox says and focused on the Economic Elite who control the media environment in which Fox News operates.

If the Fox-haters and the Obama-haters united and focused their combined outrage on the common forces behind the both of them, we would all be much better off.

The most significant bias in the mainstream media is not the liberal or conservative views propagated to divide, distract, confuse and create apathy among the populace; the ultimate bias is in what is missing from the coverage. The investigative reporting on the most powerful forces within our society is left out of the discussion.

McClatchy, one of the few real journalism news organizations, has repeatedly reported on the illegal activities of Goldman Sachs and the crime syndicate they operate in. Yet, an overwhelming majority of mainstream news outlets ignore these reports and nothing is done to hold Goldman Sachs accountable. In fact, two of the leading figures in the outright theft of our money have recently been lauded in their propaganda press. When you see Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke become the Person of the Year in Time Magazine and Goldman Sachs CEO Llyod Blankfein become the Financial TimesMan of the Year, you begin to see where the real media bias lies.

The main bias is in favor of the thieves who stole our country and economy, and own the mainstream media companies. The omni-present mainstream media is the greatest weapon of oppression humanity has ever known.

Although the Internet has had an impact, television news is still by far the most influential news medium. Despite all the new information platforms, this year we have set a new record by watching an average of four hours and 49 minutes of TV per day. We have been subjected to heavy doses of propaganda on a daily basis, for hours a day, every day of our lives.

The mainstream media creates what is known in mass psychology as the “spectrum of thinkable thought.” By constantly discussing and debating surface issues, they limit the range of debate. Having the Republican vs. Democrat paradigm leads us to never debating the underlying Economic Elite who control both of the parties, not to mention their ownership of the media platform on which this debate is taking shape. The more important underlying issues are never discussed, and therefore never enter public consciousness.

The censorship that is most prevalent today is the most dangerous form. Not the censorship of explicit words, sex, or violence, but the censorship of any thoughts outside of elite corporate ideology. Any debate that leads to critical thought on prevailing elite economic dominance is not allowed to enter into the mass media or mainstream public consciousness.

“We must conclude that a changeover is imminent and ineluctable in the co-opted caste who serve the interests of domination, and above all manage the protection of that domination. In such an affair, innovation will surely not be displayed (in the mainstream media). It appears instead like lightning, which we know only when it strikes.”

Part VI: The Economic Elite Versus The People of the USA: In our Nation’s History, the Stakes have Never been Higher

by David DeGraw

Global Research, March 21, 2010 Amped Status - 2010-02-27

Throughout this report, I have presented statistical and fact-based evidence to demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched against 99% of Americans. Despite the efforts of the mainstream media and most current politicians, awareness of this reality is spreading throughout the United States.A recent Rasmussen poll found that only 21% of Americans think that the government has the consent of the governed. An Opinion Research Corp. survey revealed that 86% believe “the system of government is broken.”

An overwhelming majority of the population has come to the realization that our government doesn’t effectively represent us anymore. It is just a matter of time before people start taking it upon themselves to begin organizing on a mass scale. Our survival instinct will soon overwhelm our conditioned passivity and erupt into a powerful countervailing force. However, the longer we hesitate and delay action, the harder it will be to obtain economic and political justice.

We cannot continue to stand by and watch our nation be raped and pillaged like this. We can no longer remain idle and passive while our families’ futures are destroyed as we are sentenced to a slow death.

It’s time for 99% of Americans to mobilize and move on common sense political reforms.

We will obviously have many differences on how our country should be run, but we can all come together to dismantle the Economic Elite by making several pivotal political reforms. As long as the game is rigged in favor of the Economic Elite, we will all lose. So let’s find common ground and focus on several obvious battles that we need to win, and can win:

Election Reform

“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.”

* Electronic Voting: First and foremost, no private corporation should be able to tell us who has won an election without providing an auditable paper trail. Many Democrats felt that Bush stole the 2000 and 2004 elections, and many Republicans felt Obama stole the 2008 election. Of course people are going to feel that elections are stolen when you have a private corporation secretly counting the votes; it is the inevitable result when you can’t verify the election results. In the past few years companies that count the votes have been consolidating, and one company, ES&S, now secretly controls the majority of all our votes. As voting watchdog Brad Friedman stated, “With the ES&S takeover of Diebold/Premier, their nearest competitor, the privately-run election Goliath now has an un-overseeable lock on virtually every election in the United States of America.” It is common sense to say that this is way too much power to be put into one private corporation.

* Campaign Finance: The stunning ruling by the Supreme Court to allow unlimited political spending by the Economic Elite has made a bad situation even worse. We must level the playing field by enacting laws to prevent the overwhelming influence of big money interests in controlling politicians who are forced to pander to them for the ever-increasing need to raise more and more money to have any shot at winning public office. Statistics show how much the Economic Elite already dominate this process: over 90% of the time the candidate who simply spends more money on their campaign wins the election.

* The Two-Party Oligarchy: We must end the two-party system by funding and voting for alternative parties. It is absurd and completely outdated to only have two dominant political parties in a technologically advanced nation of 309 million people. The two-party paradigm is obsolete and creates a system easily manipulated, as the past decade proves with the co-option of the Democratic and Republican parties. We can give our money and support to whomever we like - Libertarians, Tea Party, Progressives, Greens, Independents and the many soon-to-be-created political groups. However, it is pivotal that we immediately cease support for both the Republican and Democratic parties. We understand that there are representatives from both parties who are fighting for our interests, but they are very few and easily marginalized by paid-off party leaders.

* Getting on the Ballot: Republicans and Democrats have created rules to make it increasingly difficult for opposing political parties to even get on the voting ballot. We must make this process easier and invite new parties onto the ticket.

* Debate Commission: The Democratic and Republican control over who is allowed to participate in the nationally televised debates gives the two parties an insurmountable advantage over any other parties. If you are not even allowed to participate in them, you have no shot at winning. Along with this, all candidates should be given a fair share of television coverage.

* Voter Registration: If you are a citizen, you should be automatically registered to vote.

Governmental Policy Formation

* Secrecy, Transparency and Accountability: Government secrecy is at the root of most of our current societal and economic problems. When decisions are made in secrecy, corruption will most often be the result. By throwing light and investigation on the government policy process, we can easily expose the Economic Elite’s agenda and limit their influence. As part of this, all legislation and conference reports must be posted online prior to Congressional debate and vote.

* Lobbying: Along with campaign finance, political lobbying is another way the Economic Elite can easily manipulate our political process financially, in what amounts to legalized bribery. In 2009, a record amount of money was spent lobbying Congress, and now with the new Supreme Court ruling, lobbyists will have even more power to manipulate the political process with what amounts to buying the laws of our nation. Lobbying activities behind closed doors must cease entirely and equal time must be given, transparently, to all the parties directly affected by the law being written.

* Shutting the Revolving Door: No politician should be allowed to profit from government laws or policies which they have written or supported. The practice of leaving a major company to become a politician who then creates and/or supports laws that directly benefit the corporation he or she used to work for, or, conversely, politicians who leave public office to take a high-paying job for a company they have benefited, is a grotesque abuse and manipulation of the democratic process. The revolving door between politics and big business is worse than it has ever been and has corrupted the government like never before.

Information Platforms

* Media Concentration: Having a few large multinational corporations dominating the overwhelming majority of our news and information system will never lead to an informed citizenry. Only ten multinational corporations dominate our mainstream media system. These companies are run by 118 individuals who actively work to propagate Economic Elite rule. The people who run these media companies also sit on other corporate boards that often represent a major conflict of interest. Having only 118 people in ten companies dominating a system that creates public opinion for 309 million people is absurd. We must break up this information cartel and support a more diverse and vibrant independent press that fosters real investigative journalism.

* Net Neutrality: The free and open architecture of the Internet is vital to our success. Without an open Internet our most powerful medium for research and communication, and key organizing tool, will be lost. The Internet must be protected from growing forces that seek to control it by limiting our access to information and our ability to communicate on a mass scale.

Healthcare

* Medical Costs: We have disagreements on how to best provide healthcare, but we all agree that whatever the method, the result needs to be lower costs. We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world and we now pay twice as much as other nations. Other than creating huge salaries for health industry-related executives, there isn’t any reason why we should be forced to pay such outrageous sums of money for second-rate care. No American should die due to lack of money, or have to face bankruptcy in order to get life-sustaining treatments.

* Food and Water Supply: Our food and water supply systems have become a major health hazard. The amount of harmful chemicals found in both our food and water have reached record levels and is causing alarming levels of sickness in a growing number of people.

Real Economic Competition

* Most Americans Believe in Competition: If a person works hard, is productive and good at what they do, most everyone believes that they should make more than a person who sits around looking for handouts. However, just as in sports, to maintain a competitive environment you have to have rules in place that prevent people from having an unfair advantage. For those who believe in competition, in capitalism and free markets, you have to acknowledge that what we have now is not a free market based on fair competition. It is a rigged market, where larger institutions like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have an unfair advantage. We cannot allow them to be beyond the law, manipulate the market and then receive taxpayer funds to increase profits and risk-taking while smaller companies, outside of Economic Elite circles, have to play by a much stricter set of rules.

You can’t have free market capitalism when you have government policies favoring companies that have more political clout than others. What we have is socialism for the rich and trickle down economics for the rest of us. We have a market systemically designed to funnel money into the pockets of the richest. If the past few years have proved anything, they have proved that our economy is much more like a pyramid scheme than a free market, where the more money you have, the more money you make. So whatever your economic beliefs and theories might be, let’s all come together to admit that our “free market” is an illusion. We need to make the economic playing field fair so we that can have real competition.

* Redistribution of Wealth: Due to the rigging of our economic and political system, vast sums of wealth have been hoarded by the Economic Elite over the past 40 years. This money must be redistributed to the 99% of Americans who have been robbed and exploited. There will be much heated debate over how this money should be distributed, but we all need to agree that we must first hold the Economic Elite accountable and our wealth must be seized from them.

* Investigations and Prosecutions: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has the power to reveal the inner workings of the financial coup. We must apply intense public pressure and scrutiny to force the Commission into conducting a real investigation. Another urgent priority needs to be a much wider-ranging look at war profiteering. There has been some investigation, but not nearly enough and hardly any prosecution. These are just two of the many investigations that need to be launched. As long as we keep letting the Economic Elite get away with outright theft in broad daylight, we will never be able to restore a nation of law.

There are obviously other vital issues that need to be addressed, but these are the core common-ground issues that we must urgently rally around and support. Unless we organize and take decisive action on all these issues, we will all suffer the consequences of our collective inaction. Any politician who does not urgently move on these issues must be voted out of office and replaced by people who will aggressively fight on these fronts.

These are the core issues that keep the Economic Elite in power. As famed military strategist Carl von Clauswitz wrote in his study “On War,” it is pivotal to strike at this core structure, at “the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.”

To those Americans who feel powerless to change things, I say that your feelings are only a result of your induced delusion. You have become so propagandized that you do not even understand the significant position that you are in. We are not peasants trapped in a Third World existence. We are still a mass of people who have the power to change the course of history. The Economic Elite realize this, which is why they are attacking us with an increased intensity.

As a result of the Economic Elite’s attack on us, the inequality of wealth between the economic top one percent and the remaining 99% of the population is the highest it has ever been in our nation’s history. The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age have now been overtaken as America’s most depraved and despotic class.

On top of the 160 banks that have already failed in the past year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has listed another 702 banks as being in danger of failing. These banks “collectively hold more than $400 billion in assets” and the FDIC is already operating at “a deficit of nearly $21 billion as of Dec. 31, or more than double the previous quarter.”

With 30 million Americans now unemployed and underemployed, over the next few months five million people will lose the unemployment benefits which they have been surviving off of. Unemployment benefits in 27 states have already gone into the red. In total 40 state programs are expected to go broke. Even the most optimistic economists believe high unemployment rates will continue for the foreseeable future.

Millions more will be added to the five million families who have already been kicked out of their homes, as the number of foreclosures is expected to reach 13 million within the next few years. Food and homeless shelters are already overwhelmed, and there will be millions more in need of these life-sustaining services. 50 million Americans are currently in need of food stamps for survival and approximately 20,000 new people are added to this total every day.

With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world. Our per capita rate of 700 people imprisoned per 100,000 citizens is higher than the darkest days of the Soviet Union. On top of this, the prison industry is expecting major growth over the next few years, as a “new prison opens every week somewhere in America” and Obama commits more tax dollars for the federal Bureau of Prisons.

All told, the death and destruction wrought by this economic crisis is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every single week! And the attacks continue unabated, with no significant measures taken to defend against them and hold those responsible accountable.

With almost 200 million Americans now living paycheck to paycheck, and over 50 million already living in poverty, people are quickly running out of options. The clock is ticking loudly for them, and time delayed is time closer to death.

At the same time, Americans are arming themselves at an alarming rate. The demand for guns and ammunition has hit a record high, and the gun industry cannot produce enough bullets to keep up with orders. In the past year, 100 new armed militia groups have been formed, as militia members have doubled in numbers. Federal authorities are gravely concerned about the “uptick in militia activities.” One federal authority recently said, “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

The recent suicide-bomber who hit the IRS building in Texas will be the first of many violent acts if we don’t demonstrate that justice and the rule of law can be restored in a non-violent manner. Suicide-bombers have already reeked havoc in many countries across the globe. As the last act of revenge and desperation, people throughout the world have increasingly resorted to this method of violence and terror.

Fate has placed us in our nation’s most pivotal moment. If we do not take it upon ourselves to lead in decisive non-violent mass action, our country will soon be torn apart by violence and destruction.

In our nation’s history, the stakes have never been higher. It is vital that we recognize the urgent gravity of the situation. What happens over the next few years will determine the fate of our very way of life, of our families’ very existence. We have been attacked, and we are now at war. This is the unfortunate reality of our current crisis.

Our enemy is extraordinarily powerful. However, we are 99% of the US population, and they are only 1%. If we fight, we win!

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will.”

“All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency is great and unendurable. And oppression and robbery are organized, I say; let us not have such a machine any longer. I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”

As many if not most Prison Planet Forum members already know, the ultimate purpose of the eugenics-obsessed ruling elite’s offensive “war” against us is not merely to turn us all into Third World peasants, but to quietly and systematically murder at least 80% of us.

The economic stage of this war (which is detailed above) is largely if not entirely about making us too weak from poverty to resist the genocidal stage that is to follow.

To any relative newcomer who is tempted to regard that as hyperbole, I offer for your kind and thoughtful consideration the following:

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race."

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed “unfit,” preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in “colonies,” and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century’s first decades, California’s eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America’s most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics’ racist aims.

Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of “race and blood” in his 1902 racial epistle “Blood of a Nation,” in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.

In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation’s social service agencies and associations.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California’s quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations–which functioned as part of a closely-knit network–published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.

Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton’s ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel’s principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.

In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called “progressives” fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton’s eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind–and less or none of everyone else.

The elite agenda for global population control is not a “conspiracy theory,” it is on the record and documented

Paul Joseph WatsonPrison Planet.comFriday, June 26, 2009

There are still large numbers of people amongst the general public, in academia, and especially those who work for the corporate media, who are still in denial about the on-the-record stated agenda for global population reduction, as well as the consequences of this program that we already see unfolding.

We have compiled a compendium of evidence to prove that the elite have been obsessed with eugenics and its modern day incarnation, population control, for well over 100 years and that goal of global population reduction is still in full force to this day.

The World’s Elite Are Discussing Population Reduction

As was reported only last month by the London Times, a “secret billionaire club” meeting in early May which took place in New York and was attended by David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Bill Gates and others was focused around “how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population”.

We questioned establishment media spin which portrayed the attendees as kind-hearted and concerned philanthropists by pointing out that Ted Turner has publicly advocated shocking population reduction programs that would cull the human population by a staggering 95%. He has also called for a Communist-style one child policy to be mandated by governments in the west. In China, the one child policy is enforced by means of taxes on each subsequent child, allied to an intimidation program which includes secret police and “family planning” authorities kidnapping pregnant women from their homes and performing forced abortions.

Of course, Turner completely fails to follow his own rules on how everyone else should live their lives, having five children and owning no less than 2 million acres of land.

The notion that these elitists merely want to slow population growth in order to improve health is a complete misnomer. Slowing the growth of the world’s population while also improving its health are two irreconcilable concepts to the elite. Stabilizing world population is a natural byproduct of higher living standards, as has been proven by the stabilization of the white population in the west. Elitists like David Rockefeller have no interest in “slowing the growth of world population” by natural methods, their agenda is firmly rooted in the pseudo-science of eugenics, which is all about “culling” the surplus population via draconian methods.

David Rockefeller’s legacy is not derived from a well-meaning “philanthropic” urge to improve health in third world countries, it is born out of a Malthusian drive to eliminate the poor and those deemed racially inferior, using the justification of social Darwinism.

As is documented in Alex Jones’ seminal film Endgame, Rockefeller’s father, John D. Rockefeller, exported eugenics to Germany from its origins in Britain by bankrolling the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute which later would form a central pillar in the Third Reich’s ideology of the Nazi super race. After the fall of the Nazis, top German eugenicists were protected by the allies as the victorious parties fought over who would enjoy their “expertise” in the post-war world.

In 2003, hundreds of thousands in the U.S. alone protested against the Iraq war before it had even started, yet the war was launched anyway.

Upon reading the following excerpt, most readers will likely have a much better understanding as to the reason why....

It has long been fashionable among partisan hacks in the corporate whore “news” media to suggest or imply that, no matter how unpopular the law or policy in question is, political protesters are wrong to impugn the motives of the U.S. politicians responsible for that law or policy, since they (the politicians) were democratically “elected,” and are hence merely exercising the will of “the people.”

Whenever an establishment shill or media talking head resorts to this twisted line of reasoning, readers would be well advised to remember the following quote:

“The ‘people = government’ doctrine is equivalent to political infantilism—an agreement to pretend that the citizen’s wishes animate each restriction or exaction inflicted upon him. This doctrine essentially makes masochism the driving force of political life—assuming that if government is beating the citizens, they must want to be beaten, and thus they have no right to complain.

“The notion that ‘the people are the government’ is one of the biggest slanders that the average citizen will endure in his lifetime. To presume that any specific private citizen must be held responsible for all the cabals and conspiracies engaged in by all the bureaucrats and politicians is absurd. This is the political version of the doctrine of original sin; it assumes that a person is born politically damned with the weight of all of the past and future sins of his government upon his head. The notion that ‘you are the government’ is simply a way to shift the guilt for every crime by the government onto every victim of government. This makes as little sense as holding each ‘widow and orphan’ owner of a single share of a company’s stock fully liable for crimes secretly committed by the corporate management and holding the actual corporate directors blameless, since they merely followed the unspoken will of individual shareholders.”

-- James Bovard, Freedom In Chains, p. 103

Mr. Bovard is, of course, correct in saying we must not blame “the people” for crimes committed by a corrupt government. At the same time, however, we must recognize that it’s not actually government itself that is waging literal “war” against us, but rather the criminal, parasitic, ruling-class oligarchs who’ve hijacked that government; and that the solution, therefore, is not to mindlessly throw the baby out with the bathwater (as anarcho-capitalists from the Austrian School would have us do under the false guise of “liberty”), but to reclaim from these oligarchs our rightful control over our own government.

And, as I explained earlier in this thread, the only way to do that is to unite across both party and ideological lines at the grassroots level for the purpose of exerting AGGRESSIVE, NON-STOP, ROUND-THE-CLOCK PRESSURE on Congress (and, when applicable, our state legislators) to implement urgently-needed and long-overdue public policy reforms.

But this will never -- I repeat, never -- happen until and unless those of us who are already awake inspire a critical mass of our fellow countrymen to

* break out of the television/cell phone-induced state of “parallel play” they’ve long been in; and

* break free from their conditioned state of “learned helplessness” by simply realizing that there are FAR more of “us” than there are of “them,” and that the real power thus lies not with the tiny handful of filthy-rich, power-obsessed plutocrats attempting to enslave us all, but with We the People.

If we fail to do this, then “IMF riots” are almost certain to erupt in the not-too-distant future. And that, of course, is the last thing we need, since all that will amount to is scores of rightfully enraged citizens painting bullseyes on themselves and saying (in effect) to NorthCom and to Homeland “Security” goons: "Hey guys! You know those 'crowd control' weapons you've been just itching to play with? Well, here's a nice big target for ya!"

We also don’t need a bloody civil war -- particularly since this would, at minimum, give the ruling elite the excuse they so desperately want to officially suspend our Constitution and declare all-out martial law (goodbye America, hello Nazi Germany!), and perhaps even the excuse they need to employ the use of neutron bombs and/or bio-weapons. (The mid-20th century is long gone, and firearms are simply no match for the sort of anti-personnel weaponry that the Dr. Strangeloves of the world now have at their disposal.)

What we do need are (a) a mass awakening both to who our real enemies are and to how and why they’re waging war on us, and (b) a peaceful yet aggressive political counteroffensive by an informed, united and “mad as hell” citizenry against our would-be slavemasters.

With the way things are going, anything short of that will inevitably result in a hellish new Dark Ages.

The people of Icelandproved just how effective going on the political counteroffensive can be, if done correctly. It is therefore up to us to not only follow their lead, but to take what they did to the next level by insisting not merely on the repeal or repudiation of what we don’t want, but on the immediate implementation of what we do want. (Hence the urgently-needed “reform measures” I listed at the start of this thread.)

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

If we fail to do this, then “IMF riots” are almost certain to erupt in the not-too-distant future. And that, of course, is the last thing we need, since all that will amount to is scores of rightfully enraged citizens painting bullseyes on themselves and saying (in effect) to NorthCom and to Homeland “Security” goons: "Hey guys! You know those 'crowd control' weapons you've been just itching to play with? Well, here's a nice big target for ya!"

Great thread Geo. I must say I am not sold on the concept of a greenback machine, but if all the other reforms you propose were made first it is a better idea than what we have going on now.

I do not understand you thoughts against the Austrian school. You propose massive liquidation and canceling of derivatives etc which will cause the same kind of financial meltdown as the austrian line of thought would lead us to believe is necessary for the system to work in a fair and honest manner. I dont see how your proposals differ in any way other than in the end the issuer of currency gets the power (your model) and the holder of the currency gets the power (austrian model).

Outside of this aspect, I wholly agree with your proposals.

Logged

"Do not let your hatred of a people incite you to aggression." Qur'an 5:2At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value..." -RFK

From my readings on Nation Building, history of the world, and I Ching (Book of Changes), to control populations for the benefit of the State, the Change that is needed is the suppression of the people.

When the system intentionally crashes, the population (especially the lowest in society) will do anything to survive, and thus are manipulated into the new structure of society.

Soetoro told us he was going bring Change; this was his Revelation of the Method. The elites understood this as Change for a NWO.

I do not understand you thoughts against the Austrian school. You propose massive liquidation and canceling of derivatives etc which will cause the same kind of financial meltdown as the austrian line of thought would lead us to believe is necessary for the system to work in a fair and honest manner.

Sorry, but that is, with all due respect, the most ridiculous assertion I've heard in months (and that's saying a lot), because the quadrillion-dollar derivatives bubble (a) dwarfs not only the most liberal estimate of the U.S. money supply, but the annual productive output of the entire planet, and (b) is nothing more than the accumulated gambling debt of Wall Street speculators and scam artists.

The "financial meltdown" of 2008/2009 was the direct and inevitable result of not cancelling that ridiculously fraudulent debt.

Austrian School commentators apparently know this, which is why (among other reasons) they prefer to focus instead on the comparatively miniscule "housing" bubble. Yet it is misleading at best to equate (however subtly) derivatives debt with housing debt. To understand why, consider the underlying principles involved.

When a mortgage loan is made, the collateral-backed IOU offered by the borrower becomes an "asset" of the bank, while the money offered by the bank becomes an "asset" of the borrower. Granted, the so-called "money" offered by the bank doesn't even exist until the very moment the loan is extended, and even then exists only as a bookkeeping entry; but at least each party is going through the pretense of offering one legitimate financial asset as "lawful consideration" for another.

Such is not the case with derivatives, because these are mere bets as to whether a given asset will go up in market value.

Ellen Brown explains it this way (all emphasis original):

----------------------------------------

In a 1998 interview, John Hoefle, the banking columnist for EIR [Executive Intelligence Review], clarified the derivatives phenomenon using another colorful analogy. He said:

During the 1980s, you had the creation of a huge financial bubble....You could look at that as fleas who set up a trading empire on a dog....They start pumping more and more blood out of the dog to support their trading, and then at a certain point, the amount of blood that they're trading exceeds what they can pump from the dog, without killing the dog. The dog begins to get very sick. So being clever little critters, what they do, is they switch to trading in blood futures. And since there's no connection -- they break the connection between the blood available and the amount you can trade, then you can have a real explosion of trading, and that's what the derivatives market represents. And so now you've had this explosion of trading in blood futures which is going right up to the point that now the dog is on the verge of dying. And that's essentially what the derivatives market is. It's the last gasp of a financial bubble.

What has broken the connection between "the blood available and the amount you can trade" is that derivatives are not assets. They are just bets on what the asset will do, and the bet can be placed with very little "real" money down. Most of the money is borrowed from banks that create it on a computer screen as it is lent. The connection with reality has been severed so completely that the market for over-the-counter derivatives has now reached many times the money supply of the world. Since these private bets are unreported and unregulated, nobody knows exactly how much money is riding on them; but the Bank for International Settlements reported that in the first half of 2006, their "notional value" had soared to a record $370 trillion. The notional value of a derivative is a hypothetical number described as "the number of units of an asset underlying the contract, multiplied by the spot price of the asset." Synonyms for "notional" include "fanciful, not based on fact, dubious, imaginary." Just how fanciful these values actually are is evident in the numbers: $370 trillion is 28 times the $13 trillion annual output of the entire U.S. economy. In 2005, the total annual productive output of the world was only $44.4 trillion....

How are these astronomical derivative sums even possible? The answer, again, is that derivatives are just bets, and gamblers can bet any amount of money they want. Gary Novak is a scientist with a website devoted to simplifying complex issues. He writes, "It's like two persons flipping a coin for a trillion dollars, and afterwards someone owes a trillion dollars which never existed." He calls it "funny money." Like the Mississippi Bubble, the derivatives bubble is built on something that doesn't really exist; and when the losers cannot afford to pay up on their futures bets, the scheme must collapse. Either that, or the taxpayers will be saddled with the bill for the largest bailout in history.

Anything short of that will result in failure if not outright disaster.

Quote

I dont see how your proposals differ in any way other than in the end the issuer of currency gets the power (your model) and the holder of the currency gets the power (austrian model).

Please watch the following, then perhaps you'll understand not only how it "differs," but why the "power" ultimately lies with the "holder" of debt-free Greenbacks, not the "issuer" (primarily since, unlike Federal Reserve Notes, they never have to be paid back to the "issuer," plus interest):

Mr. Bovard is, of course, correct in saying we must not blame “the people” for crimes committed by a corrupt government. At the same time, however, we must recognize that it’s not actually government itself that is waging literal “war” against us, but rather the criminal, parasitic, ruling-class oligarchs who’ve hijacked that government; and that the solution, therefore, is not to mindlessly throw the baby out with the bathwater (as anarcho-capitalists from the Austrian School would have us do under the false guise of “liberty”), but to reclaim from these oligarchs our rightful control over our own government.

And, as I explained earlier in this thread, the only way to do that is to unite across both party and ideological lines at the grassroots level for the purpose of exerting AGGRESSIVE, NON-STOP, ROUND-THE-CLOCK PRESSURE on Congress (and, when applicable, our state legislators) to implement urgently-needed and long-overdue public policy reforms.

In addition to uniting across both "party" and "ideological" lines, it's imperative that we unite -- to the greatest extent possible -- across religious lines as well, particularly since differences over religion so often keep people who agree on virtually all political issues needlessly divided into opposing factions.

The question is: when thorny questions about morality and ethics come up, how do we prevent the usual counterproductive flame war between religious fundamentalists, on the one hand, and atheists, agnostics and/or religious moderates, on the other, from erupting as it usually does?

IMHO, there's only one answer to that question, and that is to achieve mass awareness of, and general agreement with, the Universal Ethic (UE).

With that purpose in mind, I'd like to repost here what I've posted elsewhere concerning the UE:

If an "ethic" is a system of arbitrary moral standards by which certain people subjectively measure the rightness or wrongness of human conduct, is there such a thing as a "univeral" ethic by which all of us can objectively measure such conduct?

To understand what I mean, consider the following scenario.

Imagine that a mother and her 4-year-old daughter are walking in the woods, and that a masked bandit jumps from behind a tree, grabs the child, holds a knife to her throat and exclaims to the mother, "Prove to me your child has the right to physical life! And don't lie to me, because I can read your mind, so I'll know if you're saying something you don't think is true!"

The mother (whom I'll call Jane) asks, "Why should I have to prove this?"

To this the bandit (whom I'll call Amschel) responds, "Because if you cannot prove she has the right to physical life, then it does not matter if I cut her throat, does it?"

Jane: "She has the right to physical life because both she and I believe she does."

Amschel: "But I believe she doesn't have this right. So prove to me that what you two believe is right and that what I believe is wrong, and I'll leave you in peace."

Now, if Jane were one or the other of two types of people I've known over the years, her daughter would probably be dead within five minutes -- not because of an unwillingness to save her daughter, but because of (a) her unwillingness to accept (or inability to understand) Amschel's premise that either of them could be "right" or "wrong" about anything in the first place, or (b) her unwillingness or inability to "prove" her case with anything other than empty appeals to authority (e.g., "because the Bible says so").

On the other hand, if she had read Fred Folvary's The Soul of Liberty, then she'd likely succeed in proving Amschel wrong by defining and explaining the "Universal Ethic."

If my hunch is correct, a reader is now thinking: "Huh? The Soul of Liberty? The Universal Ethic? What are you talking about?"

Allow me to answer with the following excerpts from said book (some of which are lifted from a fictional dialogue, similar to the one above, between a "bandit" and a philosopher):

---------------------------------------

Page 7:

"It is morality that gives us the right to exist, by forbidding murder. But as you stated, the right to live cannot stem from just the ethics of social custom, law, or religion, which can be arbitrary and changing. If it is absolutely wrong for you to kill this man, it can stem only from an absolute standard of right and wrong, a permanent and universal standard for all men, from which custom, law and religion derive whatever justice they may profess."

"And what is this absolute and universal standard?" asked the bandit.

Page 8:

"Good and evil are not abstractions existing by themselves. If no living beings exist, there would be no good or evil. Something can only be good or bad to someone or for somebody. 'Good' is a person's reaction and feeling that something is beneficial or agreeable to him, and 'bad' is the reaction that something is harmful or disagreeable."

Page 9:

"So far we have only shifted our terms from 'good' to 'beneficial and agreeable' and from 'bad' to 'harmful and disagreeable', but by doing so we have identified what good and evil are. We have already begun to crystallize the blurry abstractions of good and evil into the benefits and harms that affect our lives....

"Now the question arises, that if good and evil are whatever a person feels pleases or displeases himself, how do we resolve the cases in which something that pleases one person displeases another? And how can the subjective determination of good and evil be an objective, universal ethic?

"Surely our individual pleasures alone cannot determine an absolute right and wrong. But the recognition that good and evil consist of individual reactions to the conduct and existence of others is the beginning point of the Universal Ethic, or U.E. It is not the conclusion, or the ethic itself. It is the springboard from which we will dive headfirst into the waters of the Universal Ethic. For what else can there be except what each of us feels harms or benefits himself?"

Page 10:

"...we can now state the first principle of the Universal Ethic: only acts that affect others are designated as good or evil. Those actions of a person which affect himself or herself alone cannot be called good or evil by the U.E., since each person determines individually whether such actions are good or bad."

Pages 10-11:

"How can our individual perceptions of good and evil, our reactions to whatever pleases or displeases us, determine an objective, universal standard of good and evil? Not all conduct that displeases us may be called morally wrong, even if it does touch us, for the Universal Ethic must transcend our individual values. How can this bridge be crossed?

"Let us consider injury, harm and disagreeableness. We will define 'injury' in a broad sense as any act that makes us feel worse off than we were before. I am not attempting to linguistically define this and other commonly used words, but simply to give them specific meaning so that we can use them with precision.

"Now, let us define 'harm' in the more specific sense as any injury that does not depend on our personal prejudices, opinions, attitudes, or values for its effect. We define harm as an injury independent of such personal ethical views. Those injuries that do depend on our personal views we will call 'offenses.'

"To illustrate this, suppose you shoot me with your gun, and the wound injures me. Has it also harmed me? The agony does not depend on my religion, my politics, or my personal convictions. It depends on the physical pain that I feel, and therefore it is harm.

"Now contrast this with the action of someone who walks down an alley and sees a gambling casino. He detests gambling, and this place offends him. The sight of all those people throwing their lives into the wheels of fate nauseates him, and he is irritated, shocked, and upset.

"He is emotionally injured, but why? Because of his prejudice or personal views. Someone else may gamble frequently and like it. The anti-gambler's injury is due solely to his personal views. Since harm is, by our definition, independent of such views, the gambling has not harmed him."

Page 12:

"It is evident that we are morally prohibited from doing anything wrong or evil to others, or from inflicting our notion of good on others. Are we then morally obligated to do good unto others?

"If the Universal Ethic were to compel us to do good, then it would be wrong for us not to do good deeds. Thus, it would not only be wrong to harm another, but also wrong to refrain from doing good! But we concluded previously that only those acts which harm others are morally wrong. Therefore, no other acts can be wrong, including the avoidance of doing things that benefit others. If I donate my time and money to help a museum or provide toys for poor children, it is morally good, but doing good must be voluntary, rather than mandatory obligation. If we were compelled to do good to others, then we would become their slaves. The Universal Ethic is the ethic of freedom, not of slavery."

Pages 12-13:

We have traced the basic outlines of the Universal Ethic. We have spoken of injuries, harms, and benefits. Now we can bring all these concepts, these components, together and present a summary, a concise formulation of the standard we have derived. For this is the Universal Ethic:

1. Harm is an injury independent of personal ethical views (an injury being any act that makes someone feel worse off than he was before).

2. A benefit is what increases another's well-being, by his values.

3. All acts, and only those acts, that coercively harm others are wrong.

4. Acts that benefit others are morally right, but not an obligation.

Pages 23-24:

"Ethics comes from the nature of man...in whom we can designate three levels of existence.

"The first is the physical level, that of matter and energy. It is the level of man as a collection of chemicals. Inherent in material substance are laws of physics and chemistry that describe and govern its behavior: the laws of conservation, attraction, and motion that are the basis for the physical existence of living beings.

"The second is that of life, made of matter yet possessing features so distinct from raw physical substance that some people have postulated some kind of 'quickening' agent in life apart from matter. Life contains self-generating materials and processes acting under self-oriented internal forces. It is programmed, designed and directed by genetic codes that make it behave much more 'purposefully' than the random thrashing about of non-living matter directed by external or non-programmed forces. And when a living being becomes so aware that it can direct its own life self-consciously, then a third level of existence becomes possible.

"The third level is that of intelligence and sentience beyond a certain threshold. It is the level of awareness and consciousness that enables a living being such as man to control and direct its own actions and responses beyond the calls of automatic instinct (unlearned genetic programming); the predominance of learned, changeable and flexible behavior over automatic, genetically controlled reactions to stimuli; and the highly developed capacity to reason, which man is endowed with as a species. 'Intelligence' alone seems too lean a word, too cold and too narrow for this level of existence, and yet also too loose. Coyotes are said to be intelligent animals, and intelligent humans are contrasted to those who are not, yet humans as a whole exist on this third level of existence and coyotes do not....

"Very well...let us do as we did with 'harm'; let us appropriate a word a give it a special meaning. Let us use the word sentience with a meaning beyond its purely sensory definition. Webster's Third New International Dictionary gives 'consciously perceiving; aware' as one definition of sentient. Let us expand this into feeling, perceiving, and thinking with a conscious, intelligent, and self-controllable awareness. Sentience! The third and human level of existence! It may exist in beings other than human, but we are concerned here with man.

"Sentience is a matter of degree, but then so is life, and there is a threshold beyond which sentience gives rise to an existence that has its own distinct behavior, governed and described by natural laws that do not exist in other forms of life, just as biology has no counterpart in raw matter. Among the laws of sentience or intelligence is ethics.

"If life is 'quickened matter', then sentience is 'conscious life.' Good and evil are inherent in sentience or intelligence, just as good and ill health are in life, and positive and negative charges are in matter. Sentience has benevolence and malevolence just as life has pain and pleasure, and physical substance its matter and anti-matter.

"Some people have pointed to animals chewing and clawing one another and have sneered, 'There is no morality in nature, and therefore none in man, who is but part of the natural scheme.'

"That is like saying there is no pain and pleasure in physical matter, in the atoms, and thus none in life. Moral right and wrong do not exist on the levels of matter or life, but on that of sentience."

Page 33:

...just as the existence of gravity does not depend on whether we believe in it or not, neither does the existence of a permanent, objective ethic.

Pages 56-57:

The U.E. is like the law of gravity, which is fixed by nature; but our measurements of weight depend on the scales we use and on our observations. How much things appear to weigh depends on our measurement system, the accuracy of measurement, and our location and altitude. We can disagree about exactly how much things weigh, even though philosophically we agree that gravity exists equally for all. Just as physical weighing depends on gravity rather than our personal views, ethical weighing depends on the amount of harm to be measured.

To be an American citizen is very much like being the child of a wealthy and unscrupulous criminal ‘Godfather,’ who appears to be kind and generous to his own children at home, but is unflinchingly treacherous and murderous in conducting his family business, which is based on coercion, domination, exploitation, and violence. The average US citizen enjoys prosperity and relative freedom, but US prosperity derives in large part from the criminal exploitation of, and frequently the outright murder of, millions of innocent people in developing countries throughout the world. Most US citizens choose to remain in a perpetual state of denial regarding the criminal activities of their government, because they lack the courage and the character to learn and face the truth. An unquestioning acceptance of the values, motives, and goals of the US government by the majority of US citizens allows those citizens to be easily fooled and manipulated by the propaganda presented to them by the US government and by the US government-controlled ‘Mainstream Media.’

From early childhood, US citizens are raised on a steady diet of pro-US government propaganda that is fed to them at school and at home through the media of television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, and popular music. The propaganda presents the US government as an ethically superior exemplar of justice for the entire world, as an exceptionally generous contributor to global economic development, and as a benevolent arbiter of world affairs. Furthermore, a great deal of crucial information about US political history, particularly regarding events of the past half-century, is not taught in US schools and is never allowed to appear in the Mainstream Media outlets.

According to the US Census report of 1998, 12.7% of the US population lives in poverty, 15.7% lack health insurance, and at least 38% of the wealth in the USA is owned by just one percent of the US population. The personal wealth of Microsoft CEO Bill Gates exceeds that of the total combined wealth of the poorest 45% of US households, which amounts to at least 133 million people. The USA has the highest concentration of individual wealth in all of the industrialized nations, and about three times that of the second-placed nation for concentrated wealth, which is Germany. The USA also leads the world in the number of its citizens who are incarcerated in prisons: one out of seventy-five US males are in prison, of whom 68% belong to racial or ethnic minorities. As of 2003, 12% of the USA’s black males in their twenties were living in prison, compared to 3.7% of the USA’s Hispanic males and 1.6% of the USA’s white males.

The USA consumes about 25% of the world’s oil and natural resources, but compared to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the nations of Europe, the USA ranks 21st in the percentage of its Gross National Income that it gives as Official Development Assistance to developing countries.

The US government wants to act as the ‘world’s policeman,’ but the USA behaves like a corrupt cop, using its military might to coerce or to force other countries into cooperating with the USA’s economic and strategic interests.

The USA is a democracy in name only, because for the past forty years the US government has been dominated and controlled by a ruling elite of wealthy individuals and powerful corporations that carefully grooms and selects, based on the vested interests of that same wealthy elite, most of the candidates for federal office, including the Presidency. The wealthy ruling elite of the USA maintains their control over the US government through their enforcement apparatus, which includes all of the US government’s intelligence agencies, operating under the overall leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the creation of the Office of Strategic Services, which participated in both intelligence gathering and military activities for the Allies during World War Two. The OSS established several precedents, including the preferential recruitment of persons of wealth as agents, a thorough integration of the intelligence agency with various businesses, the utilization of known criminals as agents, and direct participation in drug smuggling as a means of fund-raising, that would continue within the CIA, which was created to replace the OSS shortly after the end of WW2.

The newly-formed CIA drew much of its membership from the ranks of the disbanded OSS, and the CIA continued the preferential recruitment of its agents from the wealthy upper class of US society, just as the OSS had done. The CIA has also integrated itself almost seamlessly with many international businesses, through hundreds of companies worldwide that act as CIA ‘assets.’ Just like a business, each individual regional foreign office, or Station, of the CIA is referred to within the Agency as an ‘account.’

The CIA was to be much, much more than an intelligence-gathering agency. The CIA was given the authority to initiate and conduct its own military operations, and also to establish fully-functioning businesses of whatever kind it chose, legal or illegal, throughout the world. Furthermore, the CIA was to be answerable only to the President and to the National Security Council. Those freedoms placed the CIA largely ‘outside the law,’ and prepared the way for the CIA’s eventual domination of the entire US government. The CIA-engineered assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963 was a military coup that effectively marked the death of real democracy in the USA.

Many people within the ranks of the CIA, the US military, and the US government resented President Kennedy because Kennedy refused to authorize direct US military support for the CIA’s 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion of Castro’s Cuba, support that might have prevented the Invasion’s costly failure. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy fired the top three men at the CIA: Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell, and General Cabell, whose brother was the mayor of Dallas, Texas, where Kennedy was later to be assassinated. Kennedy also announced his intention to withdraw US forces from South Viet Nam, which was another one of the CIA’s pet projects. After Kennedy’s assassination, his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, met with the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House, where Johnson made his first Presidential decision: to escalate the involvement of US troops in the Viet Nam War.

In 1977 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that a lone gunman did not kill President Kennedy, but instead that Kennedy was shot by at least two snipers, one of whom delivered the final, fatal shot to Kennedy’s right temple from the famous ‘grassy knoll’ in Dealey Plaza. Marita Lorenz testified to the HSCA that in November 1963 she had accompanied CIA agent Frank Sturgis, Lee Harvey Oswald, and a couple of Cuban immigrants with a small arsenal of firearms on a road trip from Miami, Florida to Dallas, Texas, where they met with CIA agent E. Howard Hunt and Jack Ruby at a Dallas motel. In 1994 James Files (also known as James Sutton) confessed that he had served with a team of snipers working under orders from US government agents to assassinate Kennedy, and that he personally had fired the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy from a hidden position behind a fence on the grassy knoll.

In addition to the assassination of President Kennedy, there is considerable evidence of CIA and/or FBI involvement in the political assassinations of Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr., and others.

In support of the success of the USA’s international business interests, the CIA has subverted and disrupted the democratic process in Italy, Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Haiti, Ecuador, Zaire, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Cambodia, Bolivia, Australia, Angola, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and many other countries. Using propaganda, rigged elections, extortion, blackmail, sabotage, assassination, death squads, and torture, the CIA has deposed democratically-elected leaders and governments throughout the world and replaced them with ruthless right-wing dictators who were more accommodating to US business interests.

Saddam Hussein was twenty-two years old when he was hired by the CIA to serve on a six-man team that tried to assassinate Iraq’s Prime Minister Qasim, who had stated his intention to nationalize Iraq’s oil industry and to decriminalize Iraq’s Communist Party. When the assassination attempt failed, Saddam escaped to Egypt, where he remained in frequent contact with the US Embassy and the CIA. In 1963, after Baath Party agents, supported by the CIA, succeeded in killing Qasim, Saddam returned to Iraq. In 1980 Iraq attacked Iran, starting the Iran/Iraq War, during which the USA openly sold arms and provided logistic support to Iraq, while the CIA secretly sold arms to Iran, using Israel as a go-between. More than one million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers were killed in the Iran/Iraq War, which also took a heavy economic toll on both countries. The Iran/Iraq War, one of the longest and deadliest wars of the 20th Century, served the purpose of weakening and punishing two of the USA’s major rivals for the control of the Middle East and its massive oil reserves.

On July 29th, 1991 the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with Saddam Hussein at his Presidential Palace in Baghdad, where Glaspie assured Saddam that the USA would not interfere or intervene if Iraq invaded Kuwait, which many Iraqis considered to historically be a part of Iraq. Four days later the Iraqi Army invaded and occupied Kuwait. In January and February of 1991 a US-led military coalition representing the United Nations assaulted the Iraqi forces in Kuwait, and in the desert borderland of northern Kuwait and southern Iraq the US-led force slaughtered more than 100,000 Iraqi troops with only minimal losses to the coalition forces.

Osama bin Laden is another ‘enemy’ of the USA who began his career as a CIA ‘asset,’ brokering the exchange of arms and heroin between the Afghani Mujahideen and the CIA during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. During the 1990s bin Laden provided financial support and recruited fighters for the Kosovo Liberation Army, an organization that smuggles heroin and cocaine into Europe. The KLA also receives protection and support from the CIA and the US government.

The CIA has participated in a major and an ongoing way in international drug smuggling, using its own private airline called “Air America” to bring heroin and marijuana out of Southeast Asia during the Viet Nam War, bringing cocaine into the USA as part of the illegal Iran-Contra operation during the 1980s, and now, once again, smuggling heroin out of Afghanistan. The CIA currently utilizes several airfreight companies that pose as Christian charities to ferry cocaine from Latin America into the USA and heroin from Afghanistan into Europe and the USA.

Beginning in the late 1940s with Operation Mockingbird, the CIA infiltrated all of the major media outlets in the USA, by forming alliances with publishers and media moguls, and by hiring hundreds of journalists to work as CIA stringers and propagandists. Today the major media outlets in the USA are owned and controlled by a very limited number of wealthy individuals and corporations, and the USA’s Mainstream Media presents a uniformly biased version of national and international news, full of lies and omissions, that conforms closely to the US government’s own dogma and propaganda.

The CIA and the FBI also infiltrated the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s in an attempt to derail those movements and discredit their leaders.

In his famous Farewell Speech of 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned US citizens against the growing power of what he called the Military/Industrial Complex, an unholy alliance of big business and the military which Eisenhower said was already well on its way to subverting the ideals and the principles of US democracy. Today, fifty per cent of the annual budget of the US government is spent on the military and the military debt. The many industries that support the US military are dependent on the US government’s pursuit of a continual state of warfare, as now exemplified by the USA’s manufactured, never-ending “War on Terrorism.” War is essentially a business, and the essential business of the USA is war.

Prescott Bush, the father of the USA’s 41st President and grandfather of the USA’s current, 43rd President, served as a US Naval Intelligence officer during World War One. After the war, Prescott Bush worked for the Brown Brothers Harriman Bank of New York, which bankrolled the Nazi rise to power in Germany from 1920 to 1942, when the US government finally ordered the BBH Bank to cease its illegal financial support for the rearmament of Germany. Like his Nazi clients and friends, Prescott Bush was an active white supremacist who hosted, along with his friend George Walker, another ancestor of ex-President George Herbert Walker Bush and President George Walker Bush, the Third International Congress of Eugenics in New York City in 1932.

The young Richard Nixon was a protégé of Prescott Bush, and after WW2 Nixon worked with Project Paperclip to bring hundreds of Nazi scientists and industrialists into the USA. Nixon was also Senator Joseph McCarthy’s partner in the famous Red-baiting ‘witch hunts’ of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the early 1950s. Nixon authorized the infamous Watergate burglary, in which the burglars and their associates included CIA agents Frank Sturgis, Bernard L. Barker, and E. Howard Hunt, who were assisted by Cuban exiles with CIA connections. All of them had been associated with the Bay of Pigs Invasion or the Kennedy assassination, or with both.

Prescott Bush’s son, George Herbert Walker Bush, owned the Zapata Oil Company, which included an island 30 miles from Cuba that served as the staging area for the CIA’s “Operation Zapata” in 1961, which became known afterward as the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Although he denies being there, George H. Bush was photographed standing in front of the Texas Schoolbook Depository just after President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas on November 23rd, 1963. A declassified document from the office of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover which is dated November 29th, 1963 mentions “George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.” George H.W. Bush was named Director of the CIA in 1976, although he denied having ever served the CIA in any capacity. During his term as Director of the CIA, Bush gave exclusive private briefings on the future of the world energy market to the executives of Brown Brothers Harriman Bank and to the board of directors of the Chase Manhattan Bank, which was obviously an act of conflict of interest.

False-flag bombings and murders are a common tactic of the intelligence agencies of Britain, Israel, Russia, and the USA. Members of British intelligence participated in some of the murders and bombings that were committed by the Irish Republican Army. In the famous Lavon affair of 1954, Israeli Terrorists bombed several buildings in Egypt, but one of the bombs went off prematurely and an Israeli bomber was captured, which led to the arrest of an Israeli spy ring. Abu Nidal was an agent-provocateur who assisted the Israeli Mossad by organizing hijackings and Terrorist attacks in order to foster the illusion of international Arab Terrorism. In 1999 Moscow police caught members of the Russian FSB planting bombs in an apartment building in an attempt to enflame sentiment against the rebel Chechens.

Stoking the fires of war in support of the USA’s Military/Industrial Complex is a primary function of the CIA, which has worked cooperatively with the British, Israeli, and other governments to create the bogeyman of an ‘Islamic Terrorist threat.’ A 1998 German public television documentary revealed that some of the main suspects in the Berlin disco bombing of 1986 had been working for the CIA and the Israeli Mossad. According to federal court records, FBI agent-provocateurs organized and allowed the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center to proceed. There is also considerable evidence indicating that FBI and ATF agents participated in the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

The attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11/2001; the anthrax letter attacks against two US Congressmen in October, 2001; the Spanish railway bombings in March, 2004; the London subway bombings in July, 2005; and the Bali bombings of October, 2002 and October, 2005 all show evidence of having been perpetrated by the USA and its allies, who are intent on generating animosity against the Islamic world.

The US government’s 9/11 false-flag attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon involved a coordinated effort by the CIA, the White House, the NSA, the FBI, NORAD, the Pentagon, and other federal agencies, along with the ongoing complicity of the USA’s major media outlets. The Israeli Mossad was also a likely accomplice to the 9/11 attacks, as indicated by evidence that demonstrates Israeli foreknowledge of those attacks. Since 9/11, the USA’s intelligence agencies have been further integrated under the overall leadership of the CIA, another step toward the formation of a monolithic US secret police with a global reach. Recently the arrest and ‘rendition’ by the CIA of so-called ‘Terrorist suspects’ throughout the world to undisclosed locations, often against the protests of the nations where the arrests take place, show us that not only does the USA fancy itself to be the ‘world’s policeman,’ but the CIA also wants to be the ‘world’s secret police.’

Many US citizens who oppose the aggressive right-wing domestic and foreign policies of President George Walker Bush and the Republican Party still have a naïve faith that the opposition Democrat Party will ‘turn the country around’ with a return to more Liberal policies if the Democrats are voted back into office. However, the ruling elite of the USA controls both of the major US political parties, which it manipulates like a pair of hand puppets. The Harriman Bank heiress, Pamela Harriman, was the chief contributor to the Democrat Party for thirty years, until her death in 2001. Pamela Harriman bankrolled the two Presidential campaigns of Democrat William Jefferson Clinton, who supported the CIA’s Iran/Contra drugs and arms smuggling through the airport at Mena, Arkansas while he was Governor of that State. During the 2004 Presidential election, the candidates of both major political parties were both the wealthy sons of CIA men, both graduates of Yale, both members of Yale’s secretive and elitist Skull and Bones Club, and both espoused a belief in the USA’s manufactured threat of ‘global Islamic Terrorism.’

The USA has all the ingredients of fascism: an intimate marriage of government, big business, and the military, in which the national media exclusively disseminates government-approved propaganda, and a ruthless, extra-legal and international secret police that enforces the policies of the ruling elite. Fascism in the USA is an accomplished fact, and it has been for the past forty years.

What can US citizens do to change the situation? Not much, short of revolution, because the entire US government and both of the two major US political parties are irredeemably corrupt. To bring about meaningful reform, the USA would need to abolish the CIA, require a full vote of Congress for any overseas military activity, restrict foreign aid to democracies with a proven human rights record, and eliminate financial contributions to politicians and their causes from lobbyists.

What are we going to do? The establishment is pitting us against one another namely true Americans vs. socialists. blacks vs. whites...actually all minorities vs. whites. They are portraying the tea party movement( of which i am a part of and proud) as racists which we are not. The question is what can we do? I have had to reside to the fact that the vast majority of people cannot be woke up and the are hopelessly and irrevocably ignorant . As it has always been the intelligent are always greatly opposed by the average or below average general population. Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The problem is that the stupid people think that they are just as smart if not smarter than the smart person, and therein lies their stupidity. I am so tired of being nice to people who will never truly understand anything past their own noses.

Sorry guys, I'm just venting.

Logged

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." -Thomas Jefferson

"They must find it difficult.. Those who have accepted authority as truth rather than truth as the authority" -Gerald Massey

The establishment is pitting us against one another namely true Americans vs. socialists. blacks vs. whites...actually all minorities vs. whites. They are portraying the tea party movement( of which i am a part of and proud) as racists which we are not. The question is what can we do?

One thing we can do is realize that Democrat-vs.-Republican is not the only "false paradigm" within which countless people have allowed their minds and intellects to be literally enslaved via elite-funded propaganda campaigns.

As I've explained elsewhere, if (hypothetically speaking) Obama gives the lion's share of federal outlays to the poor, he's called a "socialist"; if, on the other hand, he does the opposite and gives it instead to the parasitic war machine and to his filthy-rich cronies on Wall Street, while simultaneously imposing IMF-style austerity measures on the rest of us -- which is actually what he's doing! -- he's still called a "socialist."

Like it or not, the term "socialism" tends to give most people the impression that what Obama is at least attempting to do is take money from Wall Street and give it to Main Street. Yet since Obama is in fact doing the very opposite of that, and since giving trillions of dollars to Wall Street at the crippling expense of Main Street is the very opposite of what most Americans want, slogan-parroting Tea Party members are (whether they realize it or not) actually doing Obama a favor by giving him the "left cover" he so desperately needs to implement a corporate fascist agenda on behalf of the ruling-class oligarchs pulling his strings.

Webster Tarpley makes this point quite effectively in the following clip:

I have had to reside to the fact that the vast majority of people cannot be woke up and the are hopelessly and irrevocably ignorant . As it has always been the intelligent are always greatly opposed by the average or below average general population. Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The problem is that the stupid people think that they are just as smart if not smarter than the smart person, and therein lies their stupidity. I am so tired of being nice to people who will never truly understand anything past their own noses.

I'm always the first to agree that there's a lot of willful stupidity out there, but you seem to have a one-sided view of things. Who do you think mindlessly applauds and cheerleads establishment figureheads such as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin? A bunch of "socialists" and tree-hugging "liberals"? Of course not. It's mostly if not entirely those who openly pride themselves on being (you guessed it) anti-"socialist" and pro-"America."

Neither right-wingers nor left-wingers have a monopoly (or anything close to it) on stupidity, I assure you.

Returning to the question of what we can "do," I address that very question in my initial post to this thread.

One thing we can do is realize that Democrat-vs.-Republican is not the only "false paradigm" within which countless people have allowed their minds and intellects to be literally enslaved via elite-funded propaganda campaigns.

As I've explained elsewhere, if (hypothetically speaking) Obama gives the lion's share of federal outlays to the poor, he's called a "socialist"; if, on the other hand, he does the opposite and gives it instead to the parasitic war machine and to his filthy-rich cronies on Wall Street, while simultaneously imposing IMF-style austerity measures on the rest of us -- which is actually what he's doing! -- he's still called a "socialist."

Like it or not, the term "socialism" tends to give most people the impression that what Obama is at least attempting to do is take money from Wall Street and give it to Main Street. Yet since Obama is in fact doing the very opposite of that, and since giving trillions of dollars to Wall Street at the crippling expense of Main Street is the very opposite of what most Americans want, slogan-parroting Tea Party members are (whether they realize it or not) actually doing Obama a favor by giving him the "left cover" he so desperately needs to implement a corporate fascist agenda on behalf of the ruling-class oligarchs pulling his strings.

Webster Tarpley makes this point quite effectively in the following clip:

I'm always the first to agree that there's a lot of willful stupidity out there, but you seem to have a one-sided view of things. Who do you think mindlessly applauds and cheerleads establishment figureheads such as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin? A bunch of "socialists" and tree-hugging "liberals"? Of course not. It's mostly if not entirely those who openly pride themselves on being (you guessed it) anti-"socialist" and pro-"America."

Neither right-wingers nor left-wingers have a monopoly (or anything close to it) on stupidity, I assure you.

Returning to the question of what we can "do," I address that very question in my initial post to this thread.

I was simply ranting which is something I hardly ever do. I know that Obama is not a socialist in the most traditional of terms. He is more of a corporatist. He is leading us towards socialism. When the dollar bursts, it is going to usher in a new currency and a more socialistic type government. And I believe he is fully aware of what he is doing. No government official is truly a socialist. You don't see them spreading their wealth around, just yours and mine. I am aware of the left-right paradigm. I am not for republicans or democrats. Conservatism is a trait that is typically considered "republican" whereas liberalism is something generally associated with the democrats . I am aware that this is hardly ever the case. Mainstream Republicans and Democrats both hold the same distain for the Constitution and the rights it protects

Both republicans and democrats are really just one big government party with a Republican wing that likes war and deficits and a Democratic wing that likes taxes and welfare.

I am a libertarian and a constitutional conservative ,that places me almost directly in the middle, where the constitution says government should operate.

Logged

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." -Thomas Jefferson

"They must find it difficult.. Those who have accepted authority as truth rather than truth as the authority" -Gerald Massey

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has confirmed the worst fears of its creator President Harry Truman that it might degenerate into “an American Gestapo.” It has been just that for so long it is beyond redemption. It represents 60 years of failure and fascism utterly at odds with the spirit of a democracy and needs to be closed, permanently.

Over the years “the Agency” as it is known, has given U.S. presidents so much wrong information on so many critical issues, broken so many laws, subverted so many elections, overthrown so many governments, funded so many dictators, and killed and tortured so many innocent human beings that the pages of its official history could be written in blood, not ink. People the world over regard it as infamous, and that evaluation, sadly for the reputation of America, is largely accurate. Besides, since President Obama has half a dozen other major intelligence agencies to rely on for guidance, why does he need the CIA? In one swoop he could lop an estimated 27,000 employees off the Federal payroll, save taxpayers umpteen billions, and wipe the CIA stain from the American flag.

If you think this is a “radical” idea, think again. What is “radical” is to empower a mob of covert operatives to roam the planet, wreaking havoc as they go with not a care for morality or, for that matter, the tenets of mercy implicit in any of the great faiths. The idea of not prosecuting CIA interrogators (i.e., torturers), as President Obama has hinted, is chilling. These crimes have to be stopped somewhere, sometime, or they will occur again.

“The CIA had run secret interrogation centers before---beginning in 1950, in Germany, Japan, and Panama,” writes New York Times reporter Tim Weiner in his book “Legacy of Ashes, The History of The CIA”(Random House). Weiner has won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the intelligence community. “It had participated in the torture of captured enemy combatants before---beginning in 1967, under the Phoenix program in Vietnam. It had kidnapped suspected terrorists and assassins before…”

In Iran in 1953, for example, a CIA-directed coup restored the Shah (king) to absolute power, initiating what journalist William Blum in “Rogue State” (Common Courage Press) called “a period of 25 years of repression and torture; while the oil industry was restored to foreign ownership, with the US and Britain each getting 40 percent.” About the same time in Guatemala, Blum adds, a CIA-organized coup “overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of military government death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling more than 200,000 victims---indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century.” The massive slaughter compares, at least in terms of sheer numbers, with Hitler’s massacre of Romanian and Ukranian Jews during the holocaust. Yet few Americans know of it.

Blum provides yet other examples of CIA criminality. In Indonesia, it attempted in 1957-58 to overthrow neutralist president Sukarno. It plotted Sukarno’s assassination, tried to blackmail him with a phony sex film, and joined forces with dissident military officers to wage a full-scale war against the government, including bombing runs by American pilots, Blum reported This particular attempt, like one in Costa Rica about the same time, failed. So did the CIA attempt in Iraq in 1960 to assassinate President Abdul Kassem. Other ventures proved more “successful”.

In Laos, the CIA was involved in coup attempts in 1958, 1959, and 1960, creating a clandestine army of 30,000 to overthrow the government. In Ecuador, the CIA ousted President Jose Velasco for recognizing the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The CIA also arranged the murder of elected Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961 and installation of Mobutu Seko who ruled “with a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked even his CIA handlers,” Blum recalls.

In Ghana, in 1966, the CIA sponsored a military coup against leader Kwame Nkrumah in 1966; in Chile, it financed the overthrow of elected President Salvador Allende in 1973 and brought to power the murderous regime of General Augusto Pinochet who executed 3,000 political opponents and tortured thousands more. In Greece in 1967, the CIA helped subvert the elections and backed a military coup that killed 8,000 Greeks in its first month of operation. “Torture, inflicted in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States, became routine,” Blum writes.

In South Africa, the CIA gave the apartheid government information that led to the arrest of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, who subsequently spent years in prison. In Bolivia, in 1964, the CIA overthrew President Victor Paz; in Australia from 1972-75, the CIA slipped millions of dollars to political opponents of the Labor Party; ditto, Brazil in 1962; in Laos in 1960, the CIA stuffed ballot boxes to help a strongman into power; in Portugal in the Seventies the candidates it financed triumphed over a pro-labor government; in the Philippines, the CIA backed governments in the 1970-90 period that employed torture and summary execution against its own people; in El Salvador, the CIA in the Nineties backed the wealthy in a civil war in which 75,000 civilians were killed; and the list goes on and on.

Of course, the hatred that the CIA engenders for the American people and American business interests is enormous. Because the Agency operates largely in secret, most Americans are unaware of the crimes it perpetrates in their names. As Chalmers Johnson writes in “Blowback”(Henry Holt), former long-time CIA director Robert Gates, now Obama’s defense secretary, admitted U.S. intelligence services began to aid the mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet invasion in December, 1979.

As has often been the case, the CIA responded to a criminal order from one of the succession of imperial presidents that have occupied the White House, in this instance one dated July 3, 1979, from President Jimmy Carter. The Agency was ordered to aid the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul---aid that might sucker the Kremlin into invading. “The CIA supported Osama bin Laden, like so many other extreme fundamentalists among the mujahideen in Afghanistan, from at least 1984 on,” Johnson writes, helping bin Laden train many of the 35,000 Arab Afghans.

Thus Carter, like his successors in the George H.W. Bush government --- Gates, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell, “all bear some responsibility for the 1.8 million Afghan casualties, 2.6 million refugees, and 10 million unexploded land mines that followed from their decisions, as well as the ‘collateral damage’ that befell New York City in September 2001 from an organization they helped create during the years of anti-Soviet Afghan resistance,” Johnson added. Worse, the Bush-Cheney regime after 9/11 “set no limits on what the agency could do. It was the foundation for a system of secret prisons where CIA officer and contractors used techniques that included torture,” Weiner has written. By some estimates, the CIA in 2006 held 14,000 souls in 11 secret prisons, a vast crime against humanity.

That the CIA has zero interest in justice and engages in gratuitous cruelty may be seen from the indiscriminate dragnet arrests it has perpetrated: “CIA officers snatched and grabbed more than three thousand people in more than one hundred countries in the year after 9/11,” Weiner writes, adding that only 14 men of all those seized “were high-ranking authority figures within al Qaeda and its affiliates. Along with them, the agency jailed hundreds of nobodies…(who) became ghost prisoners in the war on terror.”

As for providing the White House with accurate intelligence, the record of the CIA has been a fiasco. The Agency was telling President Carter the Shah of Iran was beloved by his people and was firmly entrenched in power in 1979 when any reader of Harper’s magazine, available on newsstands for a buck, could read that his overthrow was imminent---and it was. Over the years, the Agency has been wrong far more often than it has been right.

According to an Associated Press report, when confirmed by the Senate as the new CIA director, Leon Panetta said the Obama administration would not prosecute CIA officers that “participated in harsh interrogations even if they constituted torture as long as they did not go beyond their instructions.” This will allow interrogators to evade prosecution for following the clearly criminal orders they would have been justified to disobey.

“Panetta also said that the Obama administration would continue to transfer foreign detainees to other countries for questioning but only if U.S. officials are confident that the prisoners will not be tortured,” the AP story continued. If past is prologue, how confident can Panetta be the CIA’s fellow goons in Egypt and Morocco will stop torturing prisoners? Why did the CIA kidnap men off the streets of Milan and New York and fly them to those countries in the first place if not for torture? They certainly weren’t treating them to a Mediterranean vacation. By its long and nearly perfect record of reckless disregard for international law, the CIA has deprived itself of the right to exist.

It will be worse than unfortunate if President Obama continues the inhumane (and illegal) CIA renditions that President Bill Clinton began and President Bush vastly expanded. If the White House thinks its operatives can roam the world and arrest and torture any person it chooses without a court order, without due process, and without answering for their crimes, this signifies Americans believe themselves to be a Master Race better than others and above international law. That’s not much different from the philosophy that motivated Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. It would be the supreme irony if the American electorate that repudiated racism last November has voted into its highest office a constitutional lawyer who reaffirms his predecessor’s illegal views on this activity. Renditions must be stopped. The CIA must be abolished.

The reason is that power-drunk Washington Democrats -- now that they control the White House and both houses of Congress -- have been too busy falling all over themselves in a treasonous rush to impose even MORE Nazi-style laws and policies on the people whom they laughingly profess to "serve."

Will a critical mass of Americans wake up and smell the NAZISM before it's too late?

The shadowy design firm that was behind the infamous Hardin Montana jail is pushing to build detention camps across America, with the latest proposal centering around a fifty acre, five hundred bed facility in Italy, Texas, part of a program that many Americans fear is based around a plan to intern political dissidents in the event of a national emergency.

Private prison development firm Corplan Corrections, headed up by an individual called James Parkey, is working with underwriter Municipal Capitol Markets Group, along with prison “consultant” Richard Reyes from Innovative Government Strategies, an outfit that works with state and local government, to oversee multiple projects concentrated in different states including Arizona and Texas.

The company was also behind the infamous internment facility in Hardin Montana, which attracted national media attention when responsibility for its security was handed to a mysterious paramilitary organization called American Police Force, which was fronted by career criminal and a convicted fraudster Michael Hilton, who operated under no less than 17 different aliases.

Parkey’s efforts to oversee three separate jail deals with Texas counties failed following insufficient funds being made available to run the facilities, and in 2005, “Three Texas county commissioners were convicted on bribery charges in connection to one of those Parkey-led projects,” reports TPM.

The only stumbling block that Parkey has repeatedly run into when trying to convince local authorities to accept his proposals to build the camps is the lack of prisoners to fill them. Indeed, critics have accused him of fleecing desperate small communities with promises of jobs and economic development that never come to fruition, leaving empty jails and financial black holes.

But should the federal government and Homeland Security activate its “ENDGAME” scenario in response to a declared national emergency, illegal aliens, as well as “potential terrorists” will be rounded up and imprisoned in detention camps that the Feds themselves, not just private companies, have been building over the course of the last decade.

Back in January 2006, we reported on how Homeland Security had awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root a $385 million dollar contract to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.

The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, as is the case with the Corplan proposals, but it is made clear that the camps will also be used “as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency.”

The stated purpose of the detention camps, to hold illegal aliens, is routinely cited, yet continuity of government plans clearly indicate that the facilities will have a dual purpose – to hold political dissidents and American citizens in the event of a declaration of martial law.

Veteran author Peter Dale Scott characterized the Halliburton contract as another step towards martial law. As Scott points out, the camps will also be used to “support the rapid development of new programs,” which more specifically relates to a longer term Homeland Security operation entitled ENDGAME, which sets its goal as the removal of not only illegal aliens but also “potential terrorists”.

As we have illustrated, in documents like the MIAC report and a plethora of others, federal authorities define American citizens who are even mildly political, own guns, or support third party candidates as potential terrorists.

Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps.

Whether these detention camps will be bossed by private paramilitary security forces, agents of the federal government, or a combination of the two is largely immaterial. What should concern all Americans is the fact that the camps are being constructed at all and that under new legal arguments being re-applied by President Obama, Americans can be abducted and held without trial in such facilities under the enemy combatant designation.

Chicago

Geolibertarian: Thankfully there are people like you. You're a sensational observer to history, and current affairs. You compile a just course that could literally defend humanity.I applaud you and am humbled.

Geolibertarian: Thankfully there are people like you. You're a sensational observer to history, and current affairs. You compile a just course that could literally defend humanity.I applaud you and am humbled.